I have just received and read the supplement to the April 2006 issue of
Cataract & Refractive Surgery Today (on the web @ www.crstoday.com) (It
should appear on the web within a week.)

The supplement, entitled: Piecing Together the Laser Vision Correction
Puzzle, contains several articles that should be of interest to
everyone considering getting LASIK.

In several of the discussions, LASIK experts, including Richard
Linstrom, Jeff Machat, Mark Whitten and Steve Schallhorn discuss the
differences in their practices between standard LASIK,
Wavefront-optimized LASIK (using the WaveLight Allegretto laser), and
Wavefront-guided LASIK, especially with the AMO VISX S4 CustomVue,
using the latest technical advances.

It is clear from the many discussions, that the best outcomes seem to
be with the latter, with re-treat rates reduced considerably from even
the Wavefront-optimized results, which are pretty good. In a panel
discussion, whereby re-treat rates vary between 10%-25% with the
WaveLight laser in the hands of Machat, Whitten and Sao John Liu, using
the newest S4 VISX CustomVue (and wavefront-guided LASIK), these
retreats drop to 4% for Lui, less than 5% for Whitten and 8% for
Machat.

In another discussion, Perry Binder agrees with his colleagues. In a
major study underway in his office, to be published later this year,
"The Star S4 wavefront-guided ablations produced the best visual
acuity results in eyes with spherical refraction and no
astigmatism...whereas eyes with myopia and astigmatism achieved the
best acuity with either the (WaveLight) Allegretto laser of the VISX
CustomVue. The LadarVision 4000 laser performed better than any other
in reducing cylindar, regardless of whether the procedure was
conventional or wavefront-guided."

In another article by Mark Whitten, he provided enhancement rates for
the following:

Conventional Ablation - 20-25%
WaveLight Allegretto (wavefront-optimized) - 10-15%
VISX CustomVue with Fourier Upgrade - about 10%
VISX CustomVue with Fourier & Iris Registration Upgrades - less than
5%

I suggest that this supplement is important reading for anyone
considering LASIK.

I will try and let you know when it goes online. In checking tonight,
the April issue of the magazine is online, but the supplement shown is
the March 2006 issue. The April supplement should be online in about a
week.

Irv Arons