Dr. Hummel - Vision Blog
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Is Botox Safe?
Yes. Some people wonder about that because Botox is derived from the Clostridium botulinum nerve toxin which causes botulism. Botulism is a very rare disease where nerve messages to the muscles are blocked, paralyzing the muscles. It's a medical emergency because paralyzed breathing muscles could quickly cause death.
However, all this is very far removed from the injectable substance called Botox. Botox injections are very tiny, given through a tiny needle. No disease is involved. The only similarity is in the way Botox works. It temporarily paralyzes certain muscles, where it is injected, so that they are not used for a few months.
The most popular way to use Botox is near the eyes, to reduce frown lines and fine lines on the forehead or around the eyes. If you have a frowning habit, it is shut down immediately by Botox injections, and those wrinkles start to smooth out. If you have a series of Botox injections, the muscles gradually learn not to contract so often, and this further smoothes out the wrinkles. The face looks more calm and youthful without frown wrinkles.
However, all this is very far removed from the injectable substance called Botox. Botox injections are very tiny, given through a tiny needle. No disease is involved. The only similarity is in the way Botox works. It temporarily paralyzes certain muscles, where it is injected, so that they are not used for a few months.
The most popular way to use Botox is near the eyes, to reduce frown lines and fine lines on the forehead or around the eyes. If you have a frowning habit, it is shut down immediately by Botox injections, and those wrinkles start to smooth out. If you have a series of Botox injections, the muscles gradually learn not to contract so often, and this further smoothes out the wrinkles. The face looks more calm and youthful without frown wrinkles.
We offer Botox treatments. If you'd like more information about it, please contact us to schedule a consultation.
posted by Patti at 12:16 PM
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Thursday, May 8, 2008
How Does PRK Work?
PRK is basically the same vision correction as LASIK, but it’s a better option for some people. The important difference is that in PRK there is no corneal flap created. If you have extra-thin corneas, or too-steep corneas, flap creation is risky. It could be cut too deeply, and interfere with the deeper layer of the cornea where the laser does its work.
People with steeply curved corneas are severely nearsighted. To be a good candidate for LASIK, your prescription must fall within certain parameters. In other words, the curvature of your cornea must be flat enough that the microkeratome can accurately create that thin flap of surface tissue.
In PRK, instead of creating a flap, the procedure removes some surface cells altogether. The laser then has access to the treatment level it needs, and the surface cells grow back afterwards. The thickness of cells removed is less than the thickness of a flap.
Recovery after PRK is longer, since those cells must regrow. You would wear a bandage contact lens to protect the cornea while it recovered. You would see some instant vision improvement, but the full extent of improvement would not be evident for several weeks.
PRK is an excellent alternative to LASIK. It is actually an older procedure than LASIK, and has stood the test of time well.
People with steeply curved corneas are severely nearsighted. To be a good candidate for LASIK, your prescription must fall within certain parameters. In other words, the curvature of your cornea must be flat enough that the microkeratome can accurately create that thin flap of surface tissue.
In PRK, instead of creating a flap, the procedure removes some surface cells altogether. The laser then has access to the treatment level it needs, and the surface cells grow back afterwards. The thickness of cells removed is less than the thickness of a flap.
Recovery after PRK is longer, since those cells must regrow. You would wear a bandage contact lens to protect the cornea while it recovered. You would see some instant vision improvement, but the full extent of improvement would not be evident for several weeks.
PRK is an excellent alternative to LASIK. It is actually an older procedure than LASIK, and has stood the test of time well.
posted by Patti at 3:11 PM
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Tuesday, April 29, 2008
What Sort of Laser is Used in LASIK?
It’s called an excimer laser. All lasers are man-made for certain purposes. They are made from different “lasing materials” which can be gas, liquid, solid or semiconductor. The excimer lasers are made from a mix of reactive and inert gases. They are ultraviolet, meaning beyond our visual range on the violet end. So when you have a LASIK treatment, you can’t see the laser beam, nor can your eye surgeon. But he can control it.
All lasers have a color, whether we can see it or not. A color is a vibration of energy. Each laser has its own vibration rate and the light moves in parallel rays. A laser doesn’t scatter its light like a flashlight or a car’s headlights. It focuses its light, sending it in a tight, coherent beam. This is why lasers can be so precise. If you think of one of those red classroom laser pointers, you’ll have the idea, except that the LASIK laser is far more precise and small than that.
Light and heat are both energy and occur together. Lasers have heat, but they vary enormously in how much heat. Some are so hot they can slice through a block of steel. When lasers are used on human tissue, they are of course much cooler, and ultraviolet lasers are among the coolest. Many also use a cooling device such as a screen or air cooling.
The light from the LASIK laser is easily absorbed by the eye tissue. No burning occurs and no cutting. The laser simply disrupts the bonds between molecules, so that the tissue disappears, vaporizes. This is known as ablation, the removal of surface tissue.
Being microscopically precise, the LASIK laser penetrates the cornea only to a tiny and pre-determined depth, and only at tiny and pre-determined spots. It’s used according to your treatment plan. The treatment system’s computer holds all the treatment plan information and since the laser is also part of the same system, the computer can control it, keeping it on track for your individual vision correction.
All lasers have a color, whether we can see it or not. A color is a vibration of energy. Each laser has its own vibration rate and the light moves in parallel rays. A laser doesn’t scatter its light like a flashlight or a car’s headlights. It focuses its light, sending it in a tight, coherent beam. This is why lasers can be so precise. If you think of one of those red classroom laser pointers, you’ll have the idea, except that the LASIK laser is far more precise and small than that.
Light and heat are both energy and occur together. Lasers have heat, but they vary enormously in how much heat. Some are so hot they can slice through a block of steel. When lasers are used on human tissue, they are of course much cooler, and ultraviolet lasers are among the coolest. Many also use a cooling device such as a screen or air cooling.
The light from the LASIK laser is easily absorbed by the eye tissue. No burning occurs and no cutting. The laser simply disrupts the bonds between molecules, so that the tissue disappears, vaporizes. This is known as ablation, the removal of surface tissue.
Being microscopically precise, the LASIK laser penetrates the cornea only to a tiny and pre-determined depth, and only at tiny and pre-determined spots. It’s used according to your treatment plan. The treatment system’s computer holds all the treatment plan information and since the laser is also part of the same system, the computer can control it, keeping it on track for your individual vision correction.
posted by Patti at 12:21 PM
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Monday, March 24, 2008
What is Custom about Custom LASIK?
Both Traditional LASIK and Custom LASIK give excellent vision improvement. But Custom LASIK uses more sophisticated diagnostic equipment when mapping your two eyes before treatment. It uses Wavefront technology. There are three companies which make Wavefront systems and we use the one made by VISX called CustomVue.
To create your treatment plan, we need to know exactly how your eyes are currently shaped. The more precisely we can map your two eyes, the more precisely we can treat them. The information in the two 3-D maps is what guides the excimer laser in treatment, since laser, Wavefront diagnostics, computer, microscope, and even your patient chair are all connected in the overall CustomVue system.
To form the 3D maps, each eye is diagnosed separately. For each, a light is shone into it which travels in waves that line up straight at the front end (the “wavefront”). This light reflects back from your eye to the CustomVue system, but the wavefront is no longer straight. It is now irregular. No human eye is microscopically perfect in its roundness, and each eye has tiny variations in its contours. So some light rays return a little ahead of others, in a distinctive pattern. Each eye is unique, which is why these maps are often likened to a fingerprint.
When you have your eyes tested for glasses or contacts, you will get a prescription that thousands, maybe millions, of other people also have. That’s because traditional prescriptions are far less precise than Wavefront diagnostics. Your two 3-D maps and the treatments they subsequently guide are yours alone. This is why Wavefront-guided LASIK is called Custom LASIK.
To create your treatment plan, we need to know exactly how your eyes are currently shaped. The more precisely we can map your two eyes, the more precisely we can treat them. The information in the two 3-D maps is what guides the excimer laser in treatment, since laser, Wavefront diagnostics, computer, microscope, and even your patient chair are all connected in the overall CustomVue system.
To form the 3D maps, each eye is diagnosed separately. For each, a light is shone into it which travels in waves that line up straight at the front end (the “wavefront”). This light reflects back from your eye to the CustomVue system, but the wavefront is no longer straight. It is now irregular. No human eye is microscopically perfect in its roundness, and each eye has tiny variations in its contours. So some light rays return a little ahead of others, in a distinctive pattern. Each eye is unique, which is why these maps are often likened to a fingerprint.
When you have your eyes tested for glasses or contacts, you will get a prescription that thousands, maybe millions, of other people also have. That’s because traditional prescriptions are far less precise than Wavefront diagnostics. Your two 3-D maps and the treatments they subsequently guide are yours alone. This is why Wavefront-guided LASIK is called Custom LASIK.
posted by Patti at 7:55 AM
0 comments
Monday, February 25, 2008
Presbyopia: How is it Treated?
Perhaps you have had normal vision all your life and never had to bother with glasses or contact lenses. Perhaps you are now a little older and have to hold the magazine at arm’s length to see it clearly. This is the annoying, age-related condition of presbyopia. Where a LASIK treatment can take care of nearsightedness, farsightedness, and astigmatism, it cannot treat presbyopia. Why not?
The cause is different. Presbyopia creeps up on us gradually because aging is gradual, and the eye’s crystalline lens is slowly aging. It is becoming stiffer. And the tiny muscles which control its curvature are probably becoming a little weaker too. You no doubt still have 20/20 eyes, but their lenses can no longer accommodate properly.
Accommodation is the lens’ ability to change its curvature according to how far away an object is that we are looking at. In a normal eye, the lens can automatically become rounder or flatter, so as to bend the incoming light rays appropriately for the distance of the object. In an aging eye, it becomes “stuck” at a certain convexity such that distant objects are still clear, but not close objects.
Ophthalmologists have no way to restore flexibility to the lens. But they can replace it with an intraocular lens (IOL).There are three well-established IOLs: ReZoom, ReSTOR, and Crystalens. They are made by three different companies and use three different technologies to give you clear vision at multiple distances.
The cause is different. Presbyopia creeps up on us gradually because aging is gradual, and the eye’s crystalline lens is slowly aging. It is becoming stiffer. And the tiny muscles which control its curvature are probably becoming a little weaker too. You no doubt still have 20/20 eyes, but their lenses can no longer accommodate properly.
Accommodation is the lens’ ability to change its curvature according to how far away an object is that we are looking at. In a normal eye, the lens can automatically become rounder or flatter, so as to bend the incoming light rays appropriately for the distance of the object. In an aging eye, it becomes “stuck” at a certain convexity such that distant objects are still clear, but not close objects.
Ophthalmologists have no way to restore flexibility to the lens. But they can replace it with an intraocular lens (IOL).There are three well-established IOLs: ReZoom, ReSTOR, and Crystalens. They are made by three different companies and use three different technologies to give you clear vision at multiple distances.
posted by Patti at 3:23 PM
0 comments
Friday, January 11, 2008
What does a LASIK Treatment Do?
The shape of the cornea (clear front part) is what a LASIK treatment works on. LASIK, whether Traditional or Custom, changes the cornea’s shape. If you are nearsighted, the cornea is too steeply curved. If you are farsighted, it’s too flat. If you are astigmatic, it’s too irregular.
Being a transparent, curved structure, the cornea bends light. The lens, behind the iris, is also a transparent, curved structure, and bends the incoming light further as it travels to the retina at the back of the eye (the “camera film”). If the cornea’s curvature is too steep, a LASIK treatment will flatten it, so that it will bend light rays a little less. Now the light will come to a focus right on the retina and you will see clearly.
If the cornea is too flat, the LASIK laser will steepen it, so it will bend light rays a little more. If the cornea is irregular in shape like a football instead of a soccer ball, LASIK will make it rounder so that light will have only one focus, instead of several.
So these are the three vision problems correctible by LASIK: myopia (nearsightedness), hyperopia (farsightedness) and astigmatism. The LASIK laser changes corneal curvature by vaporizing tiny pieces of tissue from pre-planned, precise places, according to what your vision problem is.
If you are starting to use reading glasses, you have presbyopia, and this is not treatable by LASIK. It isn’t caused by the corneal shape, but by a growing stiffness in the lens.
Being a transparent, curved structure, the cornea bends light. The lens, behind the iris, is also a transparent, curved structure, and bends the incoming light further as it travels to the retina at the back of the eye (the “camera film”). If the cornea’s curvature is too steep, a LASIK treatment will flatten it, so that it will bend light rays a little less. Now the light will come to a focus right on the retina and you will see clearly.
If the cornea is too flat, the LASIK laser will steepen it, so it will bend light rays a little more. If the cornea is irregular in shape like a football instead of a soccer ball, LASIK will make it rounder so that light will have only one focus, instead of several.
So these are the three vision problems correctible by LASIK: myopia (nearsightedness), hyperopia (farsightedness) and astigmatism. The LASIK laser changes corneal curvature by vaporizing tiny pieces of tissue from pre-planned, precise places, according to what your vision problem is.
If you are starting to use reading glasses, you have presbyopia, and this is not treatable by LASIK. It isn’t caused by the corneal shape, but by a growing stiffness in the lens.
posted by Patti at 1:03 PM
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Monday, December 17, 2007
Welcome to Our New Website
Please feel free to use our site as an information resource and refer your friends and family to the pages you will find here, from Lasik, to PRK, to cataract or glaucoma questions. If your reading brings a question to mind that we haven’t yet answered, please contact us to ask, or to set up an appointment to ask Dr. Hummel in person. We’re always pleased to educate and help those who could benefit from our procedures, as so many others have done.
We look forward to seeing you, and helping you see your best, at Hummel Eye Associates!
posted by Lydia at 8:40 AM
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(405)755-6111
Hummel Eye Associates
See Your Best…See Hummel!
4205 McAuley Blvd. #401
Oklahoma City, OK 73120
(405)755-6298
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