Lasik Surgery--Should I or Should I not?

Patients ask me if I would have refractive surgery? I tell them I wouldn't hesitate and that I already did!!! It is life changing event. I was always uncomfortable swimming being very nearsighted(-3.75) 20/400. I couldn't tell if the life guard was yelling at me or not! Or at the beach finding my way back to my belongings was always a challenge. I wore contacts for years but dry eyes and allergies always irritated my eyes. Now after lasik I only wear my glasses to read which is normal being 56 years old that I am! It is nice waking up and being able to see the clock. It is great!

Over the past 10 years review of clinical journals from around the world, including 19 studies comprising 2,200 patients revealed a 95.4 patient satisfaction rate among Lasik patients worldwide. Other cosmetic plastic surgery procedures don't come close to that rate.

Daily contact lens wearers have a 1-in-100 chance of developing a contact lens related eye infection and a 1-in-200 chance of suffering a significant loss of vision from infections. The risk of significant vision loss as a consequence of lasik surgery is close to 1-in10,000 cases.

An excimer laser is used for vision correction, removes or ablates tissue a few molecular layers at a time. The excimer laser is so precise that it can remove 0.25 microns at a time.

In it's infancy, laser vision correction- Photo-Refractive Keratectomy (PRK) was performed directly on the corneal surface. The surface skin was scraped off the cornea prior to the laser treatment. There was a 5-7 day period of blurred vision and discomfort after the surgery as the skin grew back. Some surgeons call this "Laser surgery that does not cut your cornea".

Lasik was developed to reduce both healing time and discomfort. In. Lasik surgery, a very thin "flap" of corneal tissue (with the skin attached) is retracted. The laser is then used to reshape the cornea under the flap. the flap is then repositioned over the treated area and it adheres in place within minutes. Because the skin is still attached to the flap, healing and improvement in vision usually occurs in a matter of hours with much less discomfort.

Years ago, the flap was created with a machine called a microkeratome. Creation of the flap was the riskiest part of the surgery and while the complication rate was low, many surgeons elected to go back to PRK. Again, some surgeons gave this old surgery a new name - " laser surgery that doesn't cut your cornea".

In modern Lasik a laser is used to create the flap. This procedure is called INTRALASE. Using a laser to make the flap significantly reduces the risk. When INTRALASE is used to make the flap it is sometimes called "All Laser Lasik".

The internet is filled with negative publicity about bad experiences with refractive surgery. These are a small minority of patients. A lot of these folks had their procedures back in the early days of refactive surgery. Today's refractive surgeons get excellent results that are truely life changing. I would not hesitate to to have surgery again!!!

Another common question or statement I hear is " If I wait the procedure will be better or cheaper". I can't imagine getting much better as the degree of accuracy is phenomenal. There is a tremendous amount of overhead with the acquisition of a refractive laser, it's calibration and use for every patient so I don't see the procedure getting much cheaper. It is very competitive with other types of cosmetic procedures such as breast augmentation and face lifts.