The laser beam is applied to the undersurface and the thin layer is then replaced. This procedure is called Lasik. Vision one or two weeks later seems to be the same whether with the new technology or the original procedure. Eye surgery with the Excimer laser was studied for five years by the advisory committee of Health Canada. Dr. Kwitko was chairman of that committee and in 1995, the operation was accepted as safe and effective.
Ordinary light is made up of a broad range of wavelengths and has relatively low energy.
A laser produces a very intense beam of light of one wavelength in the light spectrum that can be focussed onto a small region. Excimer laser technology was first developed in the T.J. Watson Laboratory at IBM in 1976. When a rare gas atom and a halogen molecule were combined, an active medium resulted. This medium was combined with a high voltage electrical discharge across a laser cavity, and an ultraviolet light beam with tremendous power was produced. The Excimer laser uses a mixture of argon and fluorine gasses to produce this narrow uniform beam of invisible ultraviolet light energy, which when focussed through a lens system, produces vaporization of corneal tissue.