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Chances are, if you’re a candidate for PRK and reading this, most of the people you’ve known who’ve had laser eye surgery had the LASIK version of it.

But it’s important not to compare your journey to theirs. It’s a plane vs. a train. You’re both getting to the same destination of good vision. If you want to compare it to anything, choose radial keratotomy (RK) from the 80s. Those guys rode horseback.

But if you want to really dig into the comparison between PRK and LASIK, here are the details.

Patients with thin corneas can benefit from PRK. In terms of the average percentage of the corneal thickness removed, PRK only gets rid of about 10% compared to LASIK’s 20%, leaving more corneal tissue to be reshaped with the use of an excimer laser. That’s about 50 µm to 70 µm more corneal tissue than what is left when undergoing LASIK.

Patients who lead a very active lifestyle that exposes them to high risks of eye traumas are also good candidates for PRK. A patient who is engaged in boxing, wrestling and mixed martial arts need not worry about dislodging a corneal flap during a fight since no flap is created in the first place unlike in LASIK.

PRK only involves surgery on the cornea’s front surface while LASIK requires a flap to be created. However, if he gets hit by a sequence of blows during a match, the eye can still be injured. As an aside, I’ve never had a patient with a dislodged corneal flap after LASIK despite seeing more blunt injuries than I can count when working with boxers, MMA fighters, and parents of toddlers.

The healing period for PRK is much slower compared to LASIK, however. But don’t get frustrated. It only takes about three to five days for a PRK patient to recover completely (this is still a case-to-case basis though).

On the other hand, LASIK has a much faster recovery period since most patients can go back to work (ideally in an office space where there are low eye irritants such as dust and debris) the following day.

But to end where we started, both procedures give the same visual result, and offer different paths leading to the same place.