Advanced Eye and Laser Center of California, Inc.

More than 90 percent of patient’s who have undergone LASIK surgery achieve 20/25 vision after a 30 minute laser procedure. The benefits go beyond better vision improving all areas of daily living including:

• Unobstructed vision
• Increased confidence in personal appearance and safety
• Easier participation in sports and fitness activities
• Ability to see upon waking

Post-Surgery Healing
For the first 24 hours, keep your eyes relaxing avoiding television, reading or working on the computer. Lie down, relax and keep your eyes closed as much as possible. Some more LASIK post-operative care and symptoms includes:

• Wear protective eye shields at night for about a week
• Expect some mild burning and itching as the anesthetic wears off – do not rub your eyes
• Rain or shine – wear sunglasses after surgery
• For the first week – avoid water spraying in your eyes by taking baths instead of showering
• Use a face cloth near your eyes careful not to rub them
• Don’t use make-up
• Avoid dust, smoky environments for at least a week
• Avoid alcohol for 48 hours after surgery

Patients can expect an average of 90 to 95 percent success rate with improvement in their eyesight continuing for up to six months after their procedure.

If you’re in the San Diego, California area, please come see the eye and laser specialists at Advanced Eye & Laser Center of California, Inc. Our team is experienced in the latest techniques utilizing state-of-the-art technology to give you the best eye correction care you deserve.

Tears do more than release pent up emotions. They’re chemical make-up keeps eyes smooth, clear and healthy providing protection and comfort for your visual experience.

What are Tears Made of?
Tears are made up of bacteria-fighting enzymes, oil and water. They originate from small glands found inside the upper eyelid. The salty middle layer washes away irritants and foreign particles while the first mucous-like layer helps spread the tears across the eye’s surface.

The eye normally blinks once every 12 seconds. Every time you blink, the glands go to work creating healthy moisturizing tears spreading a healing film across the surface of the eye. If the blink rate decreases, tears evaporate quicker. Certain visually intensive tasks such as , reading and long term computer work, and excessive driving means less blinking and an increase in dry eye problems.

Eye Problems from Inadequate Tear Production
Tear production keeps the eyes comfortable and fights off infection caused by microorganisms that live on the eyes’ surface. If the tear production is imbalanced, dry eye syndrome can result. The most common causes of dry eyes and inadequate tear production include:

• Environmental factors - sun, wind, high altitude, dry climate
• Aging
• Eyelids problems including poor lid functioning
• Hormonal changes
• Various medications – including diuretics, antihistamines, birth control pills, sleep pills, morphine and antidepressants
• Diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, scleroderma

Diet, teardrops and tear plugs can control dry eye syndrome. It’s important to get a professional diagnosis from your eye health practitioner on the cause of your symptoms.

If you’re suffering from dry eyes and are in the San Diego, California area, please come see the eye and laser specialists at Advanced Eye & Laser Center of California, Inc. Contact us for a consultation and examination to determine the best treatment for all your vision needs. Your perfect vision is our priority.

Our eyes are master manipulators of light. Every element of every layer is responsible for its own unique function – bending, reshaping and focusing light rays into comprehensible images that our brain interprets. These miraculous functions synchronize with each other in milliseconds creating the visual experiences of our world.

Our sight goes through a complex process from the outer to the inner eye. Light is reflected off objects and then absorbed through a sequence of layers of the eye. It begins with the cornea, which is the clear, outer part of the eye. Two-thirds of the focusing function starts here. Light is bent or refracted by the cornea before it enters the inner eye to the retina.

Pupils control how much light enters the eye. Surrounded by the muscles of the iris, the pupil dilates when light is low and contracts if light is too intense controlling the amount of light rays that enter the inner layer of the eye. Just behind the pupil is the lens, which is responsible for the other third of the focusing function. The lens focuses between near and far objects.

The retina, covered by millions of photoreceptor cells, is found on the inside wall of the back of the eye. The macula takes up about 10 percent of the retina’s center detailing and sharpening the color of the image before the signal is sent to the brain through the optic nerve.

When the eye’s vision decreases, it experiences refractive errors including: myopia or nearsightedness, hyperopia or farsightedness, or astigmatism. In the San Diego, California area, please contact the eye and laser specialists at Advanced Eye & Laser Center of California, Inc. for all your vision needs. We guarantee quality results because your complete satisfaction is our goal.

The popular analogy for how our eyes work is a camera, and it’s a good analogy. Cameras have a viewfinder, adjustable lens and film, all lined up one behind the other in a closed-off structure. The eye has structures that correspond to each of those.

The cornea is like the viewfinder – we look out through it to see and to decide what to focus on. The cornea has other functions though, as it also allows light through to the lens, whereas light goes directly to a camera lens. The cornea and the lens both bend that incoming light to focus it on the retina. It also protects the eye by being fairly thick and tough, and by being covered in moisturizing fluid which we continually spread over it by blinking.

The adjustable lens is behind the iris (colored part), and is controlled by little muscles. It changes its curvature to focus clearly at near, intermediate, and far distances, just as a camera lens can be set to give a clear picture at any given distance. (In many modern cameras, and in all simple cameras, this is done automatically, but in older or more sophisticated cameras, it is done manually for greater precision.) In the eye, this adjustability is called accommodation – the lens accommodates itself to varying distances.

The retina is at the back of the eye and corresponds to the camera film. Light-sensitive cells receive images brought in by light rays and convert that image information into nerve energy. A large nerve connects the retina to the brain.

The brain functions like a dark room, making the nerve energy into an intelligible picture and naming it for us. Our modern digital cameras don’t need a dark room in the sense of that literally dark room where negatives were developed and prints made. But they perform the same function using electronics.

You can read more detail on our How the Eye Works page.

If you are nearsighted or farsighted, Dr. Huynh can correct that by changing the cornea’s curvature in a LASIK surgery. If your lens develops cataracts, he can replace it with an implanted artificial lens. He can also do this to correct “middle-aged” vision (presbyopia).

To schedule a personal consultation with Dr. Huynh and learn more about your eyes and how your vision could be improved, please call or email our San Diego office today.

Botox Cosmetic is always in the top five most popular non-invasive cosmetic procedures, according to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ASAPS). Each year they collect statistics nationwide, and in 2007, BOTOX was the top nonsurgical procedure, with 2,775,165 people having it done. When men and women are considered separately, BOTOX is still the top nonsurgical procedure.

So what’s the deal? BOTOX is a quick and easy way to remove forehead lines, crows feet, lines around the mouth, and bands in the neck. It is particularly popular for smoothing out frown lines. It is not an injectable filler like Restylane and all the others. Instead, it works by temporarily relaxing the muscle where it is injected.

BOTOX is derived from the botulinum toxin type A, which causes botulism if it is ingested in large enough quantities. However, BOTOX is a purified form, and is given in very tiny amounts locally, rather than systemically. It blocks the nerve impulse which would otherwise tell the muscle to contract. So that muscle does not contract, you do not frown, and your forehead remains smooth and untroubled.

However, BOTOX cannot reverse wrinkles which have already formed from sun damage. It works less well for wrinkles around the mouth, since those muscles are needed every day for talking and eating. In contrast, the frown muscles are not needed, and can be safely and comfortably blocked to give you a more youthful-looking appearance.

For a BOTOX treatment, Dr. Huyhn uses a very fine needle and very carefully chooses the exact muscle to inject. The procedure takes ten to fifteen minutes and requires no anesthesia. Frown lines might need eight injections or sometimes more; crows feet typically need only three or four. There is no downtime. BOTOX injections can be done in conjunction with eyelid surgery.

Please call or email us if you would like to know more about BOTOX, and whether it would be a good option for you.

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