COMPARATIVE CHARACTERISTICS OF EFFICIENCY AND SAFETY OF ReLEx SMILE AND Femto LASIK TECHNOLOGIES WHEN CORRECTING MYOPIA
Introduction. Laser correction of refractive disorders is one of the most effective directions in the treatment of myopia. Currently, modern technologies Femto LASIK and ReLEx SMILE are actively used. The ratio of their effectiveness and safety is currently not fully determined. Purpose of the study. Comparison of performance indicators and the frequency of complications of using ReLex SMILE and Femto LASIK technologies in the treatment of patients with myopia without astigmatism. Materials and methods. Design: a single-center, prospective, randomized study. The study included the results of 1158 interventions, incl. 703 (59.5%) using ReLEx SMILE technology and 455 (40.5%) Femto LASIK. Three subgroups of patients were examined depending on the degree of myopia: mild (430 - 37.1%), medium (368 - 31.8%) and high (360 interventions - 31.1%). Statistical analysis. The determination of the statistical significance of differences was carried out by using the Mann-Whitney method for comparing groups and the Wilcoxon test - for the dynamics of the indicator within the same group. For comparison of frequency indices, Pearson''s χ<sup>2</sup> criterion was used, or (if the number of observations was less than 10), the bilateral Fisher''s test. Boundary level of significance of differences for refutation of the null hypothesis was assumed to be p <0.05. Results. When applying the Femto LASIK correction technology, results were obtained that exceeded the values of ReLEх SMILE when they were objectified by refractometry. However, the indicators of visiometry had fewer in numerical terms and practically in all groups insignificant differences between the methods. The frequency of complications with the use of ReLEx SMILE was significantly lower than with Femto LASIK. According to the total index, the differences reached 3.78 times and had a high significance (p <0.001), and were most pronounced with mild myopia (4.5 times). Conclusion. The results of the analysis indicate a comparable efficiency of the ReLEx SMILE and Femto LASIK technologies in correcting myopia with a slight advantage of the latter with a significantly lower complication rate in the ReLEx SMILE group.