Lasik 12 years ago, Ectasia a few years later

This is a photo of an eye that underwent LASIK surgery about 12 years ago and developed post LASIK corneal ectasia several years later. In an attempt to make this patient’s cornea less irregular a procedure known as Conductive Keratoplasty (CK) was done. CK involves the use of a small probe that uses radio wave to reshape the cornea. Before taking this photo, we instilled a special dye onto the ocular surface and placed a special filter before the microscope in order to highlight the defects on the cornea. The bright ring going around the corneal periphery is the LASIK flap. The fact that you see the dye lets you know that there is space between the LASIK border and the surrounding tissue. The green-yellow dots that are positioned like the numbers on a clock are from the CK probe. Several years after this photo was taken, this cornea began to come apart. The cornea became extremely cloudy and the corneal epithelium began separating from the underlying corneal tissue. In addition, this eye developed an internal ocular infection known as an endophthalmitis. After the infection was treated, corneal transplant surgery was done. The end result of all these surgeries was an eye with light perception only.