Intraoperative Complications

An intraoperative complication is the term given to complications that can arise during the surgery. Lasik is also prone to a few intraoperative complications.

• The most common of all Intraoperative Complications is "Flap complication". Even though they are the most common, yet they are very rare. Incidence of flap complication is only about 0.244%. The problem could be of that of having to reposition the flap which is not at all complex issue. This can happen due to folds or displacement of the flaps. The eventuality of this happening greatly reduces with the experience of the LASIK surgeon. So ensuring that you have a good surgeon to conduct the surgery greatly reduces the occurrence of intraoperative complications. It is a minor complication and rarely leads to permanent vision loss.
• The other complication that can happen during the LASIK Surgery is the instance of the flap coming off altogether. This happens because of the drying up of the flaps during surgery. This can be prevented by increasing the pace of the surgery. The faster the surgery gets completed, the chances of the flaps drying reduces. Even if this problem takes place good amount of sleep and shielding the eyes with spectacles or eye shields takes care of the problem.
• Another problem that has been noticed is the particles of flap interface in the eyes. Studies have shown that almost all eyes have been detected with particles under confocal microscopy.
• There have been instances of irregular cuts during surgery and if this happens the surgeon would just stop the procedure and reschedule it at a later date which would be a couple of months away. An irregular cut hardly ever becomes a problem leading to considerable loss of vision.
• Most of the complications during surgery are flap related. One can see cases of small cuts or tears, incisions which have been the cause for flaps to be cut off, irregular, thin, incomplete and small flaps are other cases in point that have been observed. There have been few cases where the eyes have developed in excess of 1 complication.
• At times there might be a breakdown in the equipments and the surgery may remain unfinished. The likelihood of this happening in LASIK is high as the complexities involved are quite high. This may also result in permanent eye damage.

It should be noted here that people who have had intra operative complications in the LASIK procedure have shown the same result after about three months as people who have had no LASIK Complication at all during surgery. Also in some instances patients have had to have a repeat of the surgical procedure. But on repeating, all eyes have shown remarkable improvement and have derived expected results.