There are several options when considering corrective eye surgery today.  Some of these include: 

• Radial Keratotomy or RK corrective surgery.
  
• Thermokeratoplasty in which heat is used to reshape the cornea. 
  
• Photorefractive Keratectomy or PRK
• Corrective Laser eye surgery, or Lasik surgery.

Each of these are refractive surgery procedures used to correct and reshape cornea (the clear, front part of the eye. The cornea is the first part of the eye that bends (or refracts) light focusing it onto the retina which enables us to see) 

Radial Keratotomy (a surgical incision (cut) of the cornea) is a procedure where a sharp knife is used to cut slits into the cornea to change its shape and thereby correcting the focusing power of the cornea. 

In thermokeratoplasty, reshaping the cornea through heat, refractive errors of the cornea are corrected by remolding the eye with a heat source. The source heat can be a laser, however a different type of laser is used than is used for the  LASIK and PRK procedures.  

Photorefractive Keratectomy or PRK  is the forerunner of LASIK eye surgery.  It was a procedure developed that reshaped the cornea, through sculpting, with the use of a laser.

LASIK is the latest form of laser eye surgery and uses the same type of laser as the PRK procedure.

The  main difference between LASIK and PRK is in the manner that the stroma, the center part of the cornea, is exposed before treating it  with a laser.  In PRK, the outer layer of the cornea, medically referred to as the “epithelium”, is scraped away in order to reach the stromal layer underneath for treatment. In the LASIK  procedure, a slit is cut in the epithelium, it is folded back and the eye can now be treated. As such is a much gentler procedure.

Since our eyes are vitally important to us, and good vision is a major contributing factor to a high quality lifestyle, it behooves us to take care of our eyes.  It is therefore important to make informed decisions when considering any form of treatment.  Click  here to learn more about corrective laser eye surgery, its benefits and shortcomings and what to watch out for.  As a final tip,  always consult more than one specialist in order to get a thorough medical opinion of what can be done for you by more than one doctor.