Rick Wakeman and his laser eye surgery

Dave Allamby | May 25, 2008 | Comments 6

Rick Wakeman and his laser eye surgery

You can still read Rick’s story about his treatment with me, online at the Daily Mail’s website. Rick talks about the whole process in a very interesting article from Rachel Kaufman.

Follow the link below to read the full article.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-404859/New-laser-surgery-cured-long-short-sight.html

Filed Under: LASIK

Tags: • • • • • • •

About the Author: Mr. Dave Allamby FRCS FRCOphth is a leading London-based laser eye surgeon. You may have seen him on the This Morning TV show with Phillip Schofield and Fern Britton or read one of several articles in the national press, recently for treating Denise Van Outen, rock giant Rick Wakeman and broadcaster Paul Ross. David is Medical Director at Focus Laser Vision, known as a world-leading clinic in the treatment of presbyopia, or age related loss of close vision. Focus Laser Vision is also London's only clinic to offer next-generation Z-LASIK laser eye treatment for short sight, long sight or astigmatism.

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  1. Dan says:
    June 18, 2008 at 2:24 pm

    Hi George

    I have recently had the “no touch” procedure with Accuvision leaving me with excellent 20/15 vision. Their name for it is Transepithelial All Laser correction. The medical name for it is Transepithelial PRK (T-PRK) which is more inforamtive because it is infact an updated version of PRK. I did quite extensive research in to this procedure before going ahead. It has been around since 1991 and has not really gained popularity among surgeons since then who tend to favour LASEK for the reasons that Mr Allamby has outlined; that it is more difficult to accurately remove epithelium to the correct depth. This factor results in more overcorrection for T-PRK on average although only by a very small degree; the skill of the surgeon and the laser technology platform is important in this regard. Advantages of T-PRK are that it does not use alcohol which may cause some minor damage to the cornea. Also, there is evidence for less keratocyte apoptosis which is a cause of haze post surgery and should ultimately lead to more accurate corrections because there is less remodeling of the ablated surface. Time will tell as to which procedure is favoured in the future. Part of my reasoning for choosing it was that it is favoured by Chad Rostron with Accuvision who really does have a tremendous reputation as a corneal specialist.

    Reply
  2. Dave Allamby says:
    June 15, 2008 at 2:03 am

    Hi John
    I have posted a reply to part a). Part b) to follow in a couple of days. thanks

    Dave

    Reply
  3. John M. says:
    June 10, 2008 at 5:18 pm

    David,

    I think Carlo wanted to know the following:

    a)PRK and LASIK in comparison to LASIK for the flap issue.

    b)Which procedure of eye surgery in the is approved for air-force pilots and astronauts. I am pretty sure that lasik in 2000 was not approved, what about now? Do you know why it was not?

    I am very interested as well on those topics, please if you have some info on that share it with us

    Best,

    John

    Reply
  4. Carlo M. says:
    June 8, 2008 at 11:07 pm

    Hi David,

    I am Carlo and I am recently discovered this great blog.
    I would like to ask a couple of questions regarding eye surgery:

    a)Why some surgeons keep saying that the creation of a flap in the eye could potentially lead to problems? To that respect should PRK and LASEK be better in the long run for patient as no flap would have been created? Regardless the recovery time I know that prk and lasek could take up to 1 month for full recovery..

    b)Is it true that LASIK procedure as not been approved for air-force pilots and astronauts in the US but PRK and LASEk yes?

    So far on the web there is a lot of confusion about those issues could you spend some time for clarifying that?

    Thanks very much

    Best Regards,

    Reply
  5. Dave Allamby says:
    June 7, 2008 at 6:25 pm

    Hi George. Thanks for your mail.
    a) and c) seem to refer to a technique called trans-epithelial PRK, where the laser is used to remove the top layer of skin cells, about 50 microns deep, rather than using traditional alcohol.

    I prefer alcohol based PRK for the following reason. If you watch the youTube video and look out for the blue glow as the laser removes skin cells, you can see the laser is already removing central corneal tissue before it has finished removing the surface skin (the middle stops glowing blue but the periphery continues).

    This means the laser treatment to correct vision is no longer accurate, unless you can precisely compensate for this effect. Better to physically remove the skin layer and get a very precise result.

    b) “Supralase” is a brand name coined by this particular clinic. From the video, they seem actually to be lasering onto the surface skin cells only. These cells are replaced every 7 days, so whatever effect is created will be fully lost over a pretty short time period.

    Overall, a waste of time and money. People have looked at this before and you can safely forget about it.

    Hope this helps! David

    Reply
  6. George Matz says:
    June 6, 2008 at 9:59 pm

    Hi David,

    Surfing on the Internet I have discovered some refractive surgery techniques. I never heard about them and on internet there is very little information.

    The tecniques are the following:
    A) No. PRK laser Touch 100%
    b) Supralase (Made by first colonial eye center, USA)
    c) C-TEN (Trans-custom Epithelial No-touch)

    I found information on this youtube video and in its comments. http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=Wnpe1NHPPR8

    Do you know them?

    A post on those tecniques would very appreciated.

    All the best

    George

    Reply

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