Objective:

To evaluate refractive and visual outcomes after excimer laser corneal refractive surgery (laser-assisted subepithelial keratectomy [LASEK] or photorefractive keratectomy [PRK], with intraoperative application of mitomycin-C [MMC]) in myopic patients with or without associated astigmatism.

Methods:

A preexperimental, before-and-after study was carried out with 81 patients (162 eyes) treated with LASEK-MMC (65 patients) or PRK-MMC (16 patients) and followed for three months. A complete ophthalmologic examination was done and the following variables age, sex, diagnosis and type of myopia were assessed, as well as pre-surgery and post-surgery visual acuity, sphere, cylinder and spherical equivalent. In addition, visual function and the refraction results were analyzed.

Results:

The median age was 24.0 years in the LASEK-MMC group and 23.0 years in the PRK-MMC group. In both groups there was a predominance of the female sex. All treated patients had compound myopic astigmatism with mild myopia. At three months, 96.9 % of patients treated with LASEK-MMC and 93.8 % of patients treated with PRK-MMC had uncorrected visual acuity of 20/20 or better, and all had vision of 20/40 or better.

Conclusions:

Laser photoablative surgery has good refractive and visual outcomes as most patients became emmetropic with marked improvement in uncorrected visual acuity and refraction postoperatively.