According to The Independent report, a new technique of improving short sightedness may be better and safer than laser eye surgery.

This news report is based on a methodical assessment of studies matching laser eye surgery to phakic intraocular lenses that are surgically embedded lenses in the eye, which work in the same way as contact lenses.

The two methods were discovered to be equally effective, both leading to comparable proportions of people with 20/20 vision a year after operation. Those given phakic lenses were also less liable to have reduced ‘best spectacle corrected visual acuity’ (BSCVA), a significant security standard in eye surgery.

The major hitch of this review is the restricted amount of research that is presently available. Only three tests treating 228 eyes were comprised. This diminishes its numerical authority for noticing disparities between the treatments.

This is a well-executed evaluation, but the question that which treatment is the safest and most successful will need to be ascertained in additional, long-term experiments.

This study was a Cochrane Review written by medics from the Moorfield Eye Hospital in London, and printed in The Cochrane Library.

The news stories have correctly mirrored these research results, but have not mulled over the constraints surrounding the tiny body of data that is at present available.