Vision Correction in Delhi NCR- LASIK, SILK, PRK, ICL

Vision correction surgery is technically called refractive surgery and helps remove specs and corrects your eye power. This means freedom from specs for most or lowers your dependence on glasses depending on your eye power.

For anyone who's worn glasses and contact lenses to see properly - we probably don't need to explain any further. Imagine: No searching for your specs, no waiting for the fog to clear up when you get out of your car, no worrying that your contacts will fall out mid-party.

At Shroff Eye Centre, we combine surgical precision with decades of expertise and excellence in eye care to correct your vision and help you achieve the vision of your dreams.

Some of the guidelines to see if you are a good candidate for vision correction surgery / refractive surgery and specs removal. For vision correction & specs removal / refractive surgery, you are likely to be eligible if:

1. Your Age is between 18-45 years with a stable eye power for a year
2. Have no other eye condition like glaucoma, keratoconus, severe dry eye etc
3. Your corneal thickness and topography should be within safe range
4. You are not pregnant or lactating
5. You do not have uncontrolled diabetes or other chronic conditions
6. You are willing to follow all post-surgery precautions and come for follow-up visits.

This depends on what your work is. Most non-strenuous activities can be resumed the very next day or within a few days of surgery. There may be some restrictions on face washing and screen time. But every eye is different and depending on your procedure, speed of healing and type of work, our doctors will advise you about this.

Most people will only need glasses once they develop Presbyopia- which is an age-related change in your eye power which usually begins in your 40s. A small number of people may have a small residual eye power after vision correction and may need a touch up procedure to correct and require further vision correction- this depends on your body's corneal tissue biomechanics.

On the day of your specs-removal procedure, you come to the centre and relax in our beautiful and calming vision correction refractive surgery area. If you are getting ICL, you will be asked to come to the main OT. Once the procedure starts, all the procedures usually take less than 30 minutes. After the procedure, our team will explain post-surgery precautions. You can go home soon afterwards. But you must come for the follow up visits as advised.

As anesthetic eye drops are used, you will not feel pain during any of the refractive procedures- SILK, LASIK, PRK or ICL.

Most patients feel a pressure sensation during the SILK or LASIK procedures. After the SILK & LASIK, a few patients may experience mild discomfort/ itching in eyes during the initial 1-2 days-which is easily controlled by over the counter medication.

Patients who undergo PRK or Streamlight may feel a little discomfort till the epithelium heals in a few days time- the pain is usually controlled by over-the-counter pain medication.

Patients with ICL may have a little discomfort initially which is well controlled by over-the-counter pain medication.

If you experience severe pain or itching or irritation, discharge or redness, please reach out to our lasik surgery team at Shroff Eye Centre on the number provided after surgery.

After vision correction surgery, we recommend that you do not go swimming for at least 1 month after the surgery. Swimming can allow infections and irritants to interfere with the healing process and lead to complications.

Yes, vision correction surgery is possible with ICL when you have high eye power. But we do have to make sure you do not have retina problems or glaucoma before we do ICL surgery as otherwise ICL may cause future eye problems.

In patients who have thinner corneas in which SILK or LASIK cannot be done, PRK or transepithelial PRK (Streamlight) or ICL may still be an option for vision correction surgery and vision correction. If you've been told you have thin cornea in Delhi NCR and are not eligible for LASIK, visit our centres and consult our vision correction surgery specialists at Shroff Eye Centre to know more options.

When you come to Shroff Eye Centre for a pre-refractive surgery checkup, we do a series of investigations to check if surgery is safe for you (called as "LASIK workup" for ease of patients understanding). These include visual acuity testing, pressure testing, pentacam and topography to analyse the cornea including thickness and shape and surface. If wavelight plus is being planned, Sightmap is done to create a ray trace of your eyes. If ICL is planned, additional testing of pupillometry, corneal white-to-white and IOL master are also done to help plan the surgery. A retina checkup is also done. Finally, our refractive surgeon checks all your reports and discusses all the options with you, including the pros and cons of all procedures. You then go to our counsellors to book your surgery. In the case of ICL, we place the order for your lens first. As it is a customised lens, it will take some time to come. Your surgery date is planned after the lens is received.

During the first few days after surgery, most people can expect to experience at least some of these effects:

• Increased sensitivity to light or glare- usually temporary
• Under or overcorrection
• Dry eyes- usually temporary- more seen post-LASIK
• Wrinkles in the flap or flap displacement- seen in LASIK
• Glare & halos when driving- usually temporary. Gets better as the cornea heals
• Discomfort and pain after PRK- usually managed by over the counter medication, resolves in a few days
• Epithelial in-growth
• Increased intra-ocular pressure- usually in ICL.

More serious and sight-threatening complications include infection and corneal ectasia but are rare if all precautions are followed correctly. Most complications are usually treatable with medication or further surgery. However, patients must remember that outcomes are dependent on both surgeon and the patient- which is why you must follow all precautions carefully after vision correction.

A flap-less technique of glass removal like SILK or EpiLASIK( Conventional or Streamlight) are better for sportspersons as there is no risk of traumatic flap displacement after injury. Flap displacement is uncommon but can cause vision loss.

Lenticule extraction: SILK, SMILE, CLEAR, SmartSight NOVA

Laser based: LASIK (popularly also often called FemtoContoura, Wavelight Plus, iLASIK, SmartSight, Z-LASIK), PRK & Transepithelial PRK (Streamlight, SmartSurf), Blade LASIK

Lens based: ICL, IPCL

LASIK stands for Laser-Assisted In Situ Keratomileusis. It is a laser surgery that corrects your eye power by reshaping the cornea, the clear front surface of your eye.

LASIK is done in two steps. First, a thin flap is made in the cornea- either with a femtosecond laser (bladeless LASIK) or with a mechanical blade called a microkeratome (blade LASIK). The flap is folded and lifted gently. In the second step, an excimer laser removes a small amount of corneal tissue to correct your eye power. The flap is then put back in place and heals on its own, without stitches.

LASIK can treat short sight (myopia), long sight (hyperopia) and astigmatism. Most patients see clearly within 24 to 72 hours. Post LASIK precautions continue longer for optimal recovery. LASIK is not suitable for those with higher eye powers, thin corneas, sportspersons or armed forces professionals.

At Shroff Eye Centre, LASIK is performed on the Alcon WaveLight platform. It is often called Contoura LASIK by patients. We also have the advanced Wavelight Plus (popularised as Innoveyes) which uses the ray tracing technology to help plan and deliver a more customised treatment. Our surgeons have won awards for their refractive surgery research and are regularly asked to train other eye surgeons.

Read more about LASIK here
Call us to book your pre-LASIK check-up

SILK stands for Smooth Incision Lenticule Keratomileusis. It is a surgery that corrects your eye power by changing the shape of your cornea by removing a corneal lenticule and minimal handling of the corneal surface.

In SILK, no corneal flap is made. Instead, a femtosecond laser shapes a small disc-like tissue inside the cornea, called a lenticule. The surgeon then removes this tissue through a tiny keyhole opening. Taking the disc out changes the shape of the cornea and corrects your eye power. The opening is so small it seals on its own.

SILK can treat short sightedness (myopia) and astigmatism. Most patients see clearly within 24 to 72 hours. Post SILK precautions continue longer for optimal recovery. SILK is not suitable for those with higher eye powers, thin corneas. But unlike LASIK, it's a good option for glass removal and vision correction in sportspersons or armed forces professionals as it is a flapless surgery. It also has a lower risk of post-surgery dry eyes.

SILK is performed on the ELITA femtosecond laser from Johnson & Johnson Vision. The ELITA received CE Mark approval in Europe in March 2023 for both the SILK lenticule procedure and LASIK flap creation.

Shroff Eye Centre was one of the first eye centres to introduce SILK in India and our surgeons have since then won awards and trained others on this technique.

Two features of the ELITA are worth knowing. It uses a very small laser spot — about 1 micron — at low energy, which leaves a smoother surface for the surgeon to work with (Johnson & Johnson Vision, via Eyes On Eyecare, 27 April 2023). And it uses a biconvex lenticule shape, designed to let the cornea settle back without micro-folding and to cut fewer corneal nerves (Johnson & Johnson Vision, via Ophthalmology Times, CE Mark announcement).

Under its CE Mark, the ELITA is indicated for short sight up to −12 D of sphere and up to −6 D of cylinder, with the sum of sphere and cylinder between −1.00 and −12.00 D (Ophthalmology Times, CE Mark announcement).

Read more about SILK here
Call us to book your pre-LASIK check-up

ICL stands for Implantable Collamer Lens. It is a surgical method of correcting eye power and not a laser procedure. No corneal tissue is removed in it.

An ICL is a soft, thin lens made of a biocompatible material called collamer. During surgery, the surgeon makes a small opening in your eye and inserts the lens into your eye, behind the coloured iris and in front of your own natural lens. Vision recovery takes 1-2 weeks and post-surgery precautions continue for around 4 weeks.

ICL can treat very high myopia, hypermetropia and astigmatism. It's a reversible procedure, i.e. the lens can be removed if required. However, ICL can cause development of glaucoma and early cataract. The risk of retina detachments in those with high refractive errors also does not change after ICL.

At Shroff Eye Centre, we have decades of experience performing ICL and our ICL patient testimonials are a testament to this. We use STAAR EVO ICL lenses.

Read more about ICL here
Call us to book your pre-ICL check-up

Streamlight is a newer type of PRK and is called transepithelial PRK, or Trans-PRK.

Streamlight is the name given to trans-PRK using Alcon's method for doing PRK in a single step, with no blade and no alcohol. It runs on the WaveLight EX500 excimer laser and was added to that platform in 2019.

In conventional PRK, the surgeon first removes the surface layer of the cornea, the epithelium, using a brush, a blade or alcohol. Then the laser fires again to reshape the cornea underneath. Streamlight does both jobs with the laser itself, in one continuous treatment. Streamlight is flapless; which makes it a better option if you play contact sports, work in the armed forces or police, or have corneas that are too thin for LASIK. The use of laser in the first step lowers epithelial trauma, reduces risk of infection, and promotes faster epithelial healing.

Recovery after any PRK, including Streamlight, is slower and less comfortable than after LASIK or SILK. The surface layer takes a few days to grow back, and vision is blurry and uncomfortable during that time.

At Shroff Eye Centre, we offer Streamlight and conventional PRK both.

Read more about Trans-PRK here
Call us to book your pre-ICL check-up

Wavelight Plus and InnovEyes are the same thing- If you have heard about InnovEyes online, you have been reading about WaveLight Plus. Innoveyes Sightmap was the older name for Sightmap and Wavelight plus. It works in two parts:

1. The Sightmap scan. This is a diagnostic machine- it measures the shape of the front and back of your cornea, the length of your eye, and how light travels through your whole eye. It uses a biometry component and a wavefront component. From these three components- which tell us the shape of the front and back surface of the cornea, the length of the eye and all the optics of the wavefront and allows us to build a 3D model of the patient's eyes.
2. Ray tracing. The Software then simulates how light will pass through that 3D model of your eye, and works out the exact laser treatment that gives the sharpest result.

Please note- It is not a new type of surgery. The operation is still LASIK- a flap, then an excimer laser. What is different is how the treatment is planned before we do the LASIK.

Contoura is the topography-guided LASIK treatment profile which is performed by the Wavelight excimer laser by Alcon. Contoura Vision is a customized LASIK treatment that uses a highly detailed scan of the eye's surface-capturing up to 22,000 unique points- essentially mapping the surface of the cornea. This map is used to create a customised and personalised LASIK treatment plan that can lead to sharper vision than standard LASIK. Contoura is available at Shroff Eye Centre. To know more about the cost of contoura, call us.

Read more about LASIK here

The answer is more nuanced than most marketing would have you believe.

Wavelight-plus utilises ray-tracing technology to perform LASIK. Contoura is the topography-guided LASIK treatment profile. Both are tech developed by Alcon and utilise the Wavelight machine. But the machine needs a special update to be able to perform Wavelight plus.

Topography uses a different algorithm from Sightmap to calculate the parameters, shape and aberrations on the front surface of the cornea.

However, as of the studies available in 2026, both provide comparable and excellent visual and refractive results. In fact, topography guided lasik did slightly better in terms of visual acuity results in one study; ray tracing provided better post LASIK contrast sensitivity in this study (Sitto, M.M., Moshirfar, M., Crook, T.B. et al. Comparison of U.S. FDA Premarket Approval Studies Between Ray Tracing-Guided LASIK with InnovEyes Sightmap Versus Topography-Guided LASIK Using Custom Ablation Treatment (T-CAT). Ophthalmol Ther 14, 2983–3005 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40123-025-01245-5)

Before deciding, we need to do the investigations to know if LASIK would even work for you. The choice between the two requires excellent clinical judgement and experience. Ray tracing, for now, seems to provide better results in those with higher order aberrations which are not corneal in origin. At the same time, topography still appears to be better for patients with corneal surface irregularities who want better vision. These are technical details for surgeons to take a call on and this is why it is best to go to a surgeon you trust, who tells you all this clearly and does not promise you 6/5 vision.

Both provide customised treatment but ray tracing may go one step ahead soon and provide fully personalised treatment as it maps how light travels inside your eye.

At Shroff Eye Centre, we believe in doing what is best for the patient- and are happy to not recommend Ray-tracing LASIK if it is not going to benefit you.

Read more about LASIK
To book a LASIK, call us.