Question: What is laser eye surgery? It's where people wearing glasses can stop wearing glasses because an optician pointed a laser into their eyes or something like that? It must be pretty powerful to impact something but does it burn off part of the eye then if it's so powerful? Does it hurt? Are lasers always red or can they be other colours too?

Claire Lee answered on 24 Jun 2013:

Laser eye surgery is actually where they shave off a bit of a person’s eye to help them see better 🙂

It only works for short sighted people. To see something, light has to enter your eye and get focused on the retina at the back of your eye. If it can’t get focused then you see a blur.

Your cornea is a lens in front of your eye, which bends the light so that it can get focused. You can affect the shape a bit with the muscles in your eye – like when you squint.

For some people, the cornea is too curved, so it focuses the light too soon, before it gets to the retina. This is short-sightedness. What laser eye surgery does is shave a bit of the cornea off so that it flattens it a bit, then the focal point lands on the retina again.

I think they numb the eye so it doesn’t hurt, though your eye is probably sensitive for a while afterwards. Don’t know if I could handle it though as your eye has to be open during the procedure! #freakout

My mom in law had laser eye surgery years ago. She cried on her way home because she had never been able to read the signs to her road before!