If you wear glasses or contacts, Dr. Liva has great news for you: LASIK eye surgery can help you see more clearly without prescription lenses! Although there is an important minority that should not have LASIK, for most people the procedure provides outstanding results. Most patients are able to see without glasses or contacts after surgery. LASIK is quick and relatively painless -- two other important benefits!

Dr. Liva performs LASIK eye surgery in his office with the most advanced technology available. His extensive experience and training have helped make him stand out from other surgeons. To begin, your eyes are numbed with anesthetic eye drops. This means that you will not feel any discomfort during the procedure. Your eyes are held open with a special device, and a precise instrument called a microkeratome is used to create a thin flap in the outer layer of your eye (the cornea). The flap remains attached to your eye at one end and is pulled back on its hinge. Dr. Liva then uses the most advanced laser available, the LADARVision System laser, to remove tissue from beneath the flap. This changes the shape of your eye, improving nearsightedness, farsightedness, or astigmatism. The flap is then laid back in place where it heals quickly without stitches.

Dr. Liva has chosen to use the LADARVision System because it provides unique features which increase the safety and diminish the chance of complications after LASIK. Here are some of the advantages:

• The LADARVision System uses a "flying spot" laser that allows the size of the treatment area to be customized. This is very important, because the most common and bothersome side effects of LASIK, glare and haloes, can occur if the treatment area is smaller than the size to which your pupils dilate in the dark. By using the LADARVision laser, we can match the treatment area size to your dilated pupil size, reducing the chance that you will suffer from glare and haloes after surgery.
• A laser radar tracking system measures your eye position at 4000 times per second. This allows for more accurate laser placement, reducing the chances of a decentered ablation which could lead to serious side affects.
• LADARVision also creates the smoothest ablation profile of all the excimer lasers available, and there are no reported cases of "central islands" which was an inherent flaw of broad-beam technology.

Dr. Liva has the LADARVision laser right in his office, and can use it to help you achieve unparalleled results. In addition, he currently uses Wavefront technology to improve your results. Wavefront has been the biggest recent breakthrough in laser vision correction. By first creating a map of your cornea and its specific irregularities, a customized treatment plan can be designed for you. Treatment can go beyond treating simple nearsightedness, farsightedness, and astigmatism. The results? Better vision -- for some people, better than 20/20.