“Flapless” LASIK is being used by some laser centers as a clever marketing technique to raise needless concern about flaps.  This ultimately increases their business since patients think they will get better results with a lot less risk than traditional LASIK.  Here are the Myths and Realities of “Flapless” LASIK:

MYTH #1:  Halos, double vision, and glare are caused by the flap in the LASIK procedure

REALITY #1:  These complications have almost NOTHING to do with the flaps!  Halos, double vision, and glare are caused mostly by older lasers which treated too small of an area or placed the treatment off-center.  Our lasers treat large areas and are customizable.  Plus both of our lasers track your eye movements to avoid any off-center treatments.  In our office, LASIK patients do not encounter these problems.

MYTH #2:  From the competitor’s website - “The revolutionary technique that makes it possible to go flapless is called "Advanced Surface Ablation."”

REALITY #2:  The real name for the flapless technique is “LASEK” with an “E”.  It has been around since the late 90’s, so it hardly qualifies as “revolutionary”. It is just a slight variation of the original laser vision correction technique known as PRK (Photorefractive Keratectomy).   In LASEK the top layer of cells of the cornea is removed by killing the cells with a toxic ethyl alcohol solution.  After the laser treats the vision, the dead cell layer is placed back on the cornea.  This technique was originally thought to be better than the older method of simply removing the top layer and allowing the top layer to grow back in naturally in 3 to 5 days (“PRK”). However, numerous studies have shown that the LASEK technique does not offer any advantage over PRK.  Most surgeons who choose to do a flapless or surface treatments are now reverting to PRK, since no study could demonstrate convincingly that laying the dead cells back on the eye actually helped with the end result.  Today, very few of the top refractive surgeons are doing “LASEK” as a routine procedure.  LASIK is still #1, with PRK done for special conditions.

REALITY #3 - What they don’t tell you:  Since there are pain nerves in the epithelium, removing these cells leads to eye pain for several days after “flapless” LASIK.  Traditional LASIK patients feel fine in just a few hours after the surgery, and feel almost perfect the day after!

REALITY #4 - While the creation of the flap does pose certain risks, the technology and equipment employed at Flowers Vision Institute are the most advanced and accurate available.  Even if a flap is not made quite perfectly, the eye heals and can undergo future laser vision correction with great success.  Flap complications are indeed rare and do not cause any real problems, and are virtually all “fixable”. 

CONCLUSION:  “Flapless” LASIK is an older method to treat the eye with laser correction in which the top layer of cells is killed with a toxic chemical.  There is little advantage to such a procedure given the advancement of flap-making technology which produces consistent, reliable, and reproducible corneal flaps quite safely.  With the added pain and additional weeks of blurry vision, "flapless" patients are less happy than their "flap" LASIK counterparts.