Radial

Radial keratotomy which is often referred to simply as RK is a refractive surgery designed to correct myopia. This procedure was developed by a doctor who had to remove a shard of glass from his patient’s eye after undergoing an accident. His patient was a small boy who had been wearing glasses when he fell off his bicycle and to remove the many shards of glass, Dr. Svyatoslav Fyodorov made radial incisions from the pupil to the edge of the cornea. After the eye was allowed to heal, the boy regained most of the vision for which he was no longer in the need of wearing glasses.

Today though, many advancements have been developed for this procedure and vision improvements by it are far better. The use of a specialised diamond knife for these radial incisions is now commonplace. The incisions themselves are deep depending on the amount of correction that is needed. In general an incision will be 90% of the thickness of the cornea.

In the same classification of surgeries you also have the accurate keratotomy which the incisions are done around the circumference rather than like the spokes on the bike. This one however is designed for the correction of astigmatism rather than myopia.

The radial keratotomy recovery time takes a while to undergo with many patients’ eyes still not fully healed even after several years. The wound healings are slow as well as unpredictable and there are also chances of infections because of this fact.

There are a number of potential side effects associated with undergoing radial keratotomy such as the potential for flare or starburst patterns of light as they reflect off the unhealed incisions. While not as noticeable during the daytime, night-time driving can be an issue especially when the oncoming cars headlights are not adjusted properly.

Furthermore it has been shown that an increase in one’s altitude can lead to partial and temporary blindness as a result of undergoing radial keratotomy. However this has only been reported by a mountaineer during a Mount Everest climb.

The goal of the procedure is to relax and flatten the steep incline of the cornea which results in the vision impairment and has to date been very successful in doing so.