Radial Keratotomy Correction: How Long Will Dr. Gulani’s Techniques Last?
Radial Keratotomy Correction: How Long Will Dr. Gulani’s Techniques Last?
When patients ask, “Our Radial Keratotomy (RK) surgery lasted a good 10 or 20 years — how long will Dr. Gulani’s corrections last?” — the answer lies in understanding why your vision changes over time, especially after RK.
Underscoring Dr. Gulani’s deep understanding of radial keratotomy eyes and his inherent capacity as a teacher of world repute, he has proposed his Gulani RK Vision Impacting Classification into 3 distinct categories.
- Factors Related to Your Original Radial Keratotomy Surgery
Radial Keratotomy was performed decades ago on virgin corneas — eyes that had never been altered surgically. RK involved making deep, radial cuts into the cornea with a diamond blade. These incisions often went as deep as over 90% into the cornea, permanently compromising its biomechanical stability.
What seemed like a miracle at first, slowly changed over the years. Why? Because those incisions caused the cornea to continuously flatten over time. This progressive flattening leads to visual fluctuations, hyperopic (farsighted) shifts, and worsening glare and night vision. That means even if RK gave you 20/20 for years, your vision may slowly change — and it has nothing to do with you, but with the nature of RK and its detrimental impact on the cornea itself.
- Factors Related to the Aging Eye
Age does not spare anyone — not even an RK patient with once-perfect vision. After the age of 40, most patients will experience presbyopia — the eye’s natural lens loses its ability to focus at near, causing you to need reading glasses. This is not a failure of RK or any modern surgery — it’s simply biology.
Later in life, especially after age 56 or 60, your natural lens becomes cloudy, and that’s called a Cataract. Cataracts progressively reduce vision clarity, increase your need for more light to read, and worsen night driving. These age-related changes further compound RK-related instability, leading many patients to believe their original RK is “wearing off.”
It’s not — it’s just that your eye is evolving with age, and RK eyes are more sensitive to any changes inside the eye especially given that they are already visually compromised and farsighted by the RK cornea flattening so presbyopia, which in normal patients could be tolerable, in an RK patient compounds the farsighted or the plus lens requirement in reading glasses and makes it more visually detrimental to which when cataracts further develop, it adds to increased visual complaints accordingly.
- Factors Related to Associated Pathologies
Over time, some patients may develop unrelated eye conditions such as dry eyes, glaucoma, macular degeneration, or retinal issues. These can further alter visual potential and may be unrelated to the original RK surgery and must be considered before planning any surgical correction of RK eyes.
Among thousands of videos on our YouTube channel, here is a video where Dr. Gulani explains his concepts in such easy language:
Dr. Gulani’s Approach: Seeking Permanent Vision Restoration
Dr. Gulani’s response to the question, “How long will it last?” is lucid and to the point:
Since most radial keratotomy patients in this age and time are at the point that they have cataract changes happening and of course already have presbyopia, the only optical elements that are continuing to change is that cataract and its inability to help reading or see in the distance.
Additionally, think about this; even if you had not had radial keratotomy, you are at the age where you need cataract surgery (does not matter how “ripe” or “mature” your cataract is), so performing that surgery especially as he custom designs for you with his LenzOplastique® based cataract surgery is a no brainer and a path that every patient with or without RK at this age and time would be electing, and given that once this cataract is removed and a special lens implant is placed in the eye, that optical and visually element is permanently addressed.
Therefore, the only factors after this LenzOplastique® based cataract surgery that could change are associated pathologies or age-related changes that may happen in the future, none of which can be as dramatic as those of oncoming presbyopia and cataract which RK patients are experiencing presently.
Also, in some extreme cases Dr. Gulani also has the surgical ability to perform his proprietary LaZrPlastique® technique on your Radial keratotomy corneal scars and irregularity to further correct that shape and visual status.
With over 30 years of experience in correcting possibly every type and severity of RK complications in patients from all over the world, Dr. Gulani custom-designs each treatment plan. He identifies which factors are involved and causing your current visual decline:
- For the cataract, he performs LenzOplastique® based custom designed cataract surgery using cutting-edge lens technologies.
- If the RK incisions or scars are the problem, he may perform LaZrPlastique® to sculpt and regularize the cornea.
- In extreme cases, he may even employ Corneoplastique® to rebuild and stabilize corneal structure.
These procedures are designed to be long-term and permanent — because they target the very source of change.
He may even stage the surgery, like building blocks (think Lego™ pieces), if the eye is too complex or requires multiple levels of impacted corrections; for example, staged LenzOplastique®+ LaZrPlastique® and m.o.i.s.t® therapy. This intelligent and individually customized sequencing is what sets him apart from the rest of the world’s eye surgeons. He doesn’t just react — he anticipates, plans, and corrects for the future.
In fact, the lack of understanding of how radial keratotomy eyes behave and what changing elements are associated or compounded in each eye is why many eye surgeons land up in complications with patients severely disappointed having undergone short term fixes like laser surgeries on the cornea, or hyped lens implants for their cataracts without the full understanding of how the entire optical system and different levels of visual deficits in an RK eye perform.
If you have suffered from such surgical complexity, shortcomings or complication, you can still be helped by Dr. Gulani’s restorative techniques.
So yes, your RK surgery may have lasted 20 years, but Dr. Gulani’s approach is designed for long-term vision by correcting the parts of your eye that are destined to change — before they change again.
Though there are no guarantees of outcome given the high integrity of Gulani Vision Institute and Dr.Gulani despite an enviable track record of success with Radial keratotomy patients from all over the world, over 3 decades, his logical explanation above will help you and your eye doctors, optometrists, and eye surgeons better understand the long term and permanent visual goal that he sets out to achieve for every RK eye no matter how complex they are and therefore his approach to each patient or even each eye could be uniquely tailored in that direction.
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