Bordeaux Vision & lasers

Practical advice

It is recommended to stop wearing contact lenses before your consultation visit – for a week if you wear soft lenses and about ten days for flexible lenses. This allows for more precise topographical examinations.

If you live far away, or if you are travelling by car, you may need to take someone with you in order to drive you back home safely if your pupils have been dilated during the exam.

You will be greeted in the centre where someone will answer your final questions, if you have any.

You will then be taken into the airlock of the operating suite and dressed with an overall, and shoe covers and a cap, to comply with the usual aseptic rules before entering the dedicated operating room ISO 5 classified.

The anesthesia of your eyes is carried out very simply and quickly by applying a few special eye drops.

The Femtosecond or Excimer laser procedure will be performed while you are comfortably lying down.

For PKR treatment, the bilateral procedure lasts about 10 minutes. Delivery of the laser treatment itself only takes a few seconds; the rest of the time is devoted to your installation, preparation of the operating field and the conditions of laser delivery. The procedure ends with instillation of antibiotics and anti-inflammatory eye drops and placing therapeutic contact lenses in for 72 hours. The treatment is painless.

Femtolasik bilateral surgery lasts about 20 minutes. The first step consists of a pre-cutting of the corneal flap and involves only 15 seconds of laser delivery per eye, but a rigorous set up and careful preparation takes less than ten minutes; the second stage of the procedure is to lift off the flap in optimal aseptic conditions and perform the Excimer laser ablation. The procedure ends with replacing and smoothing the flap, and with instillation of antibiotics and anti-inflammatory eye drops.

The treatment is painless. A feeling of pressure on the eye is normal during the set up time for the Femtosecond laser delivery; the white part of the eye may be red at the end of the procedure.

You will be given tinted glasses when you leave.

Of course, you will be awake throughout the whole procedure and we will ask to look at small lights, called fixation targets, which help us check the correct centering of your treatment.

It is important not to rub your eye in the few days after the Femtolasik procedure because a risk of displacing the flap would be detrimental to the outcome.

The instillation of drops is required in the first following days: anti-inflammatory drops, antibiotics, artificial tears.

Eye trauma should be avoided due to the risk of displacing the lasik flap (team sports, combat sports…)

Makeup can be used again carefully within a few weeks.

It is recommended not to bathe in a swimming-pool before 4-6 weeks.

  • For Femtolasik surgery:

Depending on the degree of your initial visual defect, visual recovery is more or less fast, but it generally takes a few hours.

As soon as the next day, your vision usually permits you to drive a car again.

  • PKR surgery:

Depending on the degree of your initial visual defect, vision is blurred for several days, it gradually improves, the pain stops after 48 hours and driving can be considered as soon as vision is good enough, within 4 to 6 days.

  • For Femtolasik surgery:

Postoperative recovery usually involves conjunctival redness, which is common and linked to the mechanical pressure from femtosecond laser applanation system which was held on your eye by suction.

The impression of having “sand” or “foreign bodies” in the eye is common in the first few hours, as is the feeling of dry eyes.

  • For PKR surgery:

In the first 48 hours, vision is very blurred and eyes are painful. A therapeutic lens, put in place at the end of procedure, decreases pain and painkillers are sometimes required in the first hours. The pain disappears with the re-epithelialization of the cornea which takes 48 to 72 hours. Vision remains blurred, the lenses are removed at follow-up on the third day and visual acuity gradually increases.

To find out if you are eligible for a procedure at the Thiers Eye Clinic
Do not hesitate to contact us via our form, an ophthalmologist will answer all your questions.
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