An advanced form of LASIK eye surgery that uses a virtual 3D model of an eye to deliver more personalised treatment has been shown to achieve better visual outcomes than the SMILE Pro laser vision correction technique, according to a study.
The research, presented at the recent annual meeting of the American Academy of Ophthalmology, involved 60 patients who received the new technique, known as wavelight plus, in one eye, and SMILE Pro in the other.
Wavelight plus uses more than 100,000 data points from each patient’s eye to create a more personalised treatment.
Those data points create a “digital twin” of the patient’s eye, a three-dimensional version that helps surgeons customise corrections with greater precision.
The study showed that, three months after surgery, the differences between the patients’ eyes were marked.
Ninety-eight percent of patients achieved 20/12.5 vision or better with wavelight plus, compared with 82% with SMILE Pro.
Also, every eye treated with wavelight plus was within a quarter-diopter of the target prescription, while SMILE Pro achieved this level of precision in about three-quarters of cases.
More than 80% of eyes treated with wavelight plus gained an additional line of vision beyond their baseline, compared with fewer than one-third of eyes receiving SMILE Pro.
“The wavelight plus results are particularly encouraging for the future of the field,” said lead researcher, Professor A. John Kanellopoulos, MD, at New York University medical school.
“We found that ray-tracing LASIK not only effectively corrected refractive error, but also improved visual performance at higher percentages than SMILE Pro.”
He said larger studies involving multiple centres and surgeons would help to further validate these findings.
