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Abstract The study conducted on sixty eyes of 30 patients aging between 20 and 30 years old divided into 2 groups according to the surgical intervention into LASIK group (30eyes) and SMILE group (30 eyes). Patients were examined before surgery, and 1 week, 1 month, and 3 months postoperatively using swept source anterior segment OCT to compare the effect of LASIK and SMILE on tear menisci.AS-SS-OCT is a quick noninvasive procedure used to measure the upper and lower tear menisci, has been confirmed to be used for both quantitative evaluation of the tears and diagnosis of dry eye syndrome. It has a high sensitivity and specificity to detect early changes in tear meniscus after refractive surgery and to facilitate investigation of dry eye throughout the follow-up period after surgery.Results of the present study showed that after assessment of the LASIK group, all parameters were the lowest 1 week postoperatively and started to improve over time but fail to reach its preoperative level by the third month while in the SMILE group, all parameters were the lowest 1week postoperatively and started to improve over time and returned almost to its preoperative level by the third month.Throughout the periods of the examination 1 week, 1 month, and 3 months postoperatively, LTMH, LTMA, UTMH and UTMA were significantly lower in LASIK group than SMILE group In follow up visits, none of the patients showed significant corneal staining or reported significant sensation of dryness after surgery. The decrease in tear volume might not have been severe enough to cause corneal staining or elicit subjective symptoms, so evaluating the tear menisci might detect tear deficiency before the appearance of significant symptoms. It is known that the two techniques) LASIK and SMILE) are safe, effective and predictable. It is supposed that the sooner the parameters of the UTM and LTM, especially the height, returned to their preoperative values, the lesser the incidence of dry eye in the early postoperative period. However, dry eye symptoms occur less frequently after FS-SMILE than after LASIK. The TMH with FS-SMILE returned almost to 96 % of its preoperative level by the third month and the TMH with LASIK height start to increase after the first week and reached about 81.5 % of its preoperative level by the third month. AS-SS-OCT has a high sensitivity to detect early changes in tear menisci and has the potential to become a routine dry eye test at clinics in the future. |