Sports and Refractive Surgery

Visual acuity improvement is a stepping stone to better athletic performance. Today refractive surgery makes perfect vision possible.

Dr Appiotti has developed a tailor-made two-step protocol for athletes:
Step 1 Personal Sportsman Profile

PSP – Personal Sportsman Profile is a specially designed program tailor-made to each eye. Besides vision correction, the ultimate goal is to achieve better than 20/20 vision under any light and strain conditions. As light changes on a field, court, ski piste or in a sports arena, stable and clear vision can make a big difference.

Step 2 Visual Training

It is a neuro-visual training program tailor-made to each athlete with the support of sports professionals. The goal is to improve hand-eye and foot-eye coordination, thus reducing visual-motor reaction time, improving muscle activation time and boosting performance.

Refractive Surgery and Performance Enhancement

Sport goes hand in hand with perfect vision. Both amateur and professional athletes are becoming more and more familiar with the notion that perfect vision is instrumental in unlocking their full athletic potential.

Many athletes with vision problems practice sports without visual correction. Others wear glasses or contact lenses – the latter being the more natural choice due to their comfort, safety and quality of vision. However, specific playing conditions and an excessive use of contact lenses with their inherent risk of infection often lead to contact lens intolerance. Moreover, clinical evidence shows that even wearing contact lenses does not guarantee perfect correction.

Poor vision usually generates standard behavioral models in response to certain stimuli based on the principle of least effort. As a result, people tend to develop seemingly incorrect postural behavior, which, however, is aimed at compensating for their visual deficit.

For example, when one of the muscles controlling eye movements is not working properly, maintaining binocular vision requires more effort. This deficit is compensated for by head rotation, which in turn has an adverse effect on the back or knees. Likewise, people with astigmatism tend to tilt their heads to achieve better focus, especially when they wear contact lenses as they often do not ensure perfect correction.

Such incorrect postural behavior hampers performance in professional athletes. This is why many of them have opted for refractive surgery.

Make an appointment now

Dr. Appiotti performs laser eye surgery in state-of-the-art eye clinics such as Vista Vision in Milan or Verona. To make an appointment and determine whether you are a good candidate for the laser treatment available for your vision problem, please contact us by email or phone

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    Refractive surgery for professional athletes Vision problems impact performance

    Doctor Appiotti’s particular attention to the relationship between posture, movement and quality of vision has made him the choice of choice for professional sportsmen on the international scene for the correction of vision defects and to improve their sports performance over the last 30 years.

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