Laser Eye Surgery Forum

Uneven cornea - is it still safe for me to have laser eye surgery?

I went to have laser surgery last week but post a pentocam study it was shown that my cornea was uneven (thicker towards the lower outer edge of each eye?)The surgeon said thathe wasn't happy to continue with surgery on that day, to leave my lenses out for a further 2 weeks and repeat the pentacam test. He felt that this could be related to contact lense wear. He said that if I wanted to proceed with sugery that he would recommend LASEK rather than the wavefront intralase lasik that I had opted for. Is this cornea shape common post contact lense wear? I wear daily disposibles and had left them out for 8 days prior to the consultation. I know its hard to comment without seeing the pictures but would it be safe to continue with laser eye surgery? (My prescription is -2 Right and -2 cyl -0.25 axis 35 on left.)Many thanks in advance for any advice.

Your pentacam images presumably showed the corneas to be steeper (rather than thicker)in the lower half. This is a risk factor for problems post-op. Contact lens wear can certainly induce this warpage of the cornea, and it was the right call to postpone and repeat the scans 1-2 weeks later. It may well be that (without seeing the scans or knowing more) you have an inferior (lower) steepening, which may not be contact lens related. In this case, your surgeon is quite right to suggest wavefront LASEK as the better option. If the difference between centre of the steep inferior part and is opposite point on the cornea is more than 2.0 units, then I would not recommend any laser eye surgery as safe. If it is 1.5-2.0 units, I generally recommend LASEK/PRK as the treatment of choice. Your surgeon can tell you these figures and explain more when you return for your repeat scans. Hope that answers your question! Feel free to ask anything else.