Intrastromal refractive surgery with ultrashort laser pulses in living animals

摘要

In order to perform refractive surgery, fs-laser pulses of 130 fs pulse duration were focussed into animal cornea. By focussing the radiation down to spotsizes of 5 μm, very precise cuts could be achieved inside the treated eyes, accompanied with minimum collateral damage to the tissue by thermal or mechanical effects. Due to these low side effects, μm-cutting precisions at preparing of corneal flaps and lenticules can be achieved. Thus, animals studies with 8 living rabbits were performed, in which intrastromal lenticules and flaps were created and extracted. Woundhealing reactions were studied by histo-pathological analysis of the treated eyes in intervalls at one, 7, 14 and 28 days after surgery. The treated eyes showed mild woundhealing reactions with comparable results to what is known from Excimer-LASIK. Moreover the use of the fs-laser offered new possibilities in preparation of corneal flaps, providing advantages to the use of the mechanical keratome.