Laser eye surgery is an effective treatment that often gives positive results in short periods of time. Yes, it is an effective treatment, but the fact that it is a surgical procedure and is applied for a sensitive organ such as the eye often causes patients to hesitate from laser eye surgery. So are we really talking about a risky procedure? Let’s evaluate this situation with the latest scientific studies.
How Many People in the World Have Had Laser Eye Surgery and How Many of Them Have Faced a Significant Risk Factor
First of all, we need to talk about the scientific research whose data we will analyse. This scientific research both shows how many people in the world have undergone laser eye surgery and reveals the risk of ectasia in patients who have undergone surgery.
A Little Information – What is Ectasia?: Unexpected thinning of the cornea after surgery and changing its shape in an undesirable way.
The research covers the years 1984 – 2021. According to the research, laser eye surgery was performed on more than 40 million patients in total.
According to the shared data, we can also reach the numbers of surgeries performed on an annual basis.
Accordingly, it was determined that LASIK was performed on 1,680,880 people annually, PRK on 283,920 people and SMILE operation on 96,750 people. Of course, let us state that the figures may vary. When we consider the world in general, these numbers show that millions of people have laser eye surgery.
The other important part of the study is how low the risk of ectasia is. In this regard, an evaluation was made on the basis of annual operations.
According to this
Only 1453 cases of ectasia were detected in 1,608,880 LASIK surgeries. This is the incidence of ectasia;
- 20 per 100.000 eyes for PRK,
- 90 in 100,000 eyes for LASIK,
- It shows that for SMILE it was calculated as 11 per 100,000 eyes.
Conclusion
According to the data we obtained from scientific research, laser eye surgery is widely preferred worldwide. We also understand that the likelihood of important complications such as ectasia is very low.
It should be noted that there are some risk factors that are effective in the occurrence of an important complication such as ectasia. Insufficient corneal thickness before the surgery and the presence of diseases such as keratoconus are among the factors that increase the risk of ectasia.
We already see that the risks are very low, but let’s say that a detailed examination is very important to minimise the effect of risk factors. The examination to be performed by a specialist doctor will also reveal how suitable you are for laser eye surgery.
