Light is the fastest thing we know of, it travels 186,000 miles in just one second. And the distance to the sun is reached in under 10 minutes at light speed. A femtosecond is a unit of time, a tiny piece of a second. It is 10 to the -15 power seconds or 1/100000000000000 of a second. How small you might wonder is that, well in a femtosecond that same beam of light that can travel around the earth 25 or so times in a second, travels just a third of a micron in a femtosecond. This means that in 1000 femtoseconds, light travels 300 microns or about 1/3 of a millimeter -- those tiny little gradations on the ruler you can barely see! This is less than the thickness of a credit card in 1000 femtoseconds, and we have a laser that has pulses so short, that they are only a few hundred femtoseconds. This means that the laser is shooting out pulses of light, or photons, in packets that span just a tiny fraction of a millimeter, light photon bullets and these tiny light bullets are what makes femtosecond LASIK possible. The "bullet" is only a micron in size and has very low energy, but when focused at the proper spot will create a very tiny break in the tissue of the cornea. When combined with hundreds of thousands of similar spots, it allows surgeons to cut a precise plane in tissue in a way that is more exact than the precision of any other kind of cutting of tissue that exists. All this techno-talk means that a femtosecond laser can do what no laser has ever been able to do before. It is light years beyond cutting with a scalpel. It is the right tool for the job.

The word LASIK has become a household name for laser vision correction. 15 years ago when we started offering this procedure as the first in Colorado, no one had heard of this funny word before. This post is to describe the meaning of the word and to help bring a discussion of laser vision correction to those who want to experience better vision in Denver Colorado, and throughout Kansas, Wyoming, Nebraska, and elsewhere.

Why we have maintained our current "Denver" location for over 25 years in a high rise office building that is particularly well suited as a laser vision correction center.

When considering laser vision correction, there are many things that are relevant in making that decision. First and most important are the medical issues such as whether one would benefit from vision improvement versus the risks of undergoing an elective procedure. Next there are the logistical considerations of who and where would make the most sense for an individual. Finally, there are the financial considerations of affordability and relative cost at different centers. Everyone likes to get good value for the money they spend, and it would seem that like many commodity purchases, the lowest price would be the best. In a complex purchase, it is more difficult to obtain clarity of the cost and value even more than understanding the clarity that can be obtained by the procedure itself. We invite you to read our belief about cost and LASIK and please comment whether this makes sense to you and any suggestions how we might improve our ability to offer you the best vision correction at the most affordable cost. Thank you. sy4r8tf7c9

LASIK has become one of the most widely accepted surgical procedures in the world. Insurance rarely pays the costs for this procedure. There are a wide range of apparent costs for LASIK at different centers and this post is to discuss what these costs include, and more specifically what we are doing at Dishler Laser to make LASIK more affordable for you.

Dr. Dishler appears weekly on Martino TV as a vision expert.