Humidity and LASIK Surgery

Humidity and LASIK Surgery

Better LASIK – Passing the Sniff Test

see clearly with the best LASIK in Colorado

Best LASIK in Colorado
A Focus on Humidity and Odor in the Laser Room

Odors and Humidity in the laser eye surgery room can affect your results. Now you are probably asking, do the best LASIK surgeons in Colorado really spend their day fussing about something like controlling the odor and humidity in the LASIK room. In a word, the answer is, absolutely! LASIK is a precision sport and excellence is in the details.

At The Eye Laser Center of Northern, Colorado we strive to be the best LASIK center in Colorado. This requires an extreme focus on every variable. I am proud of each of my partners at the Eye Laser Center of Northern Colorado and their commitment to excellence in every detail.

Laser Eye Surgery Beam Control

The beam of laser used to correct your vision can be altered, if only very slightly, by particles free floating airborne particles.  For most of the lasers in Colorado, the laser beam passes through the atmosphere for around 2 1/2 feet as it travels through its arm and then as leaves for an additional 6 inches until it reaches your eye.  During this time, it is subject to the airborne particles.

The Wavelight laser beam that we use passes protected through a controlled nitrogen gas as it transits through the arm of the laser so it is not as affected by atmospheric particles as much as other lasers.  The beam does travel through the atmosphere for about 6 inches as it leaves the device before it reaches your eye. In our quest to be the best laser center in Colorado, we choose to control those six inches of air.

Best Colorado LASIK Surgeons (Humidity Control)

Humidity is a measure of the amount of water particles found in air.  The more water particles, the higher the humidity.  The water particles have the potential of affecting how much laser actually reaches your eye.  There are studies showing that controlling humidity improves results and others that argue the point.  Either way, we control it.

Eye Lasers work best in an environment that is a bit like Seattle (sorry, not a happy word in Colorado right now), cool and humid.  As a result, we keep our laser room a few degrees cooler than you might expect and we have a complex humidity control system that adds moisture to the air on the normal dry Colorado days and removes moisture on the rare rainy days.

Colorado and Wyoming patients are lucky in this regard, since it is easier to add moisture to the air than take it out. What matters most is that the humidity is consistent.  Our results are consistently among the best in Colorado and the nation, in part, because we control this variable.

Best LASIK Surgeons in Colorado Through Odor Control

Odor In the Laser Eye Surgery Room can affect Results

What is that Smell? (Odor Control)

If you can smell an odor, it means that there could be potentially dangerous airborne particles.  These particles could affect the amount of laser that actually reaches your eye.  Again, this is a minor effect, but it is a variable we can control.  As a result, we ask our patients to not wear perfumes or use shampoos that have a strong fragrance on the day of their laser eye surgery.

At times we have to ask a patients to clean off some fragrance before we can proceed. In addition, we have a large air scrubbers for our room that we can activate when needed to clean the air.  For example, during the fire season, there are days when we use the scrubber to purify the particles and clean the air in the surgery room.

These steps are part of our quest to provide the best results available in Colorado and the nation.

LASIK Beam Purifier Vacuum

Laser treatment creates a faint odor as the beam interacts with the ozone in the air and the structure of your cornea.  Both of the lasers we use have an evacuation vacuum that removes the laser plume during the treatment to to keep the beam pathway clear. In the end, the precision is found in the details, and that is why we pride ourselves to be the best in Colorado

If you have any other questions about laser eye surgery, I would be happy to meet with you at my office, or you can leave a comment.

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