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Lasik Eye Surgery Patients, the success rates

The Lasik operation can be a wonderful, life-changing option for many people whose vision is less than perfect.  There are several different types of Lasik operations now available, from the original and well documented procedure to Lasik procedures done with three dimensional wavefronts, or done entirely with lasers.  Each of these variations of the Lasik procedure should be discussed with the physician that is to perform the operation.
Like any surgery, Lasik does have the potential for side effects.

Sometimes reading the horror stories of the outcomes of a Lasik procedure can deter people from seriously considering such a choice.  It is also true that the vast numbers of people who have a successful, trouble-free Lasik surgery tend not to report a long and detailed story of their experience, unlike those that have experienced trouble afterward.

However, it is good to know what the possible side effects of the Lasik procedure are, and also the likelihood that one of these side effects will occur for a particular patient.  Just like any medicine we take, each has a possible number of side effects, but we generally assume that the likelihood of a serious side effect is small, and we take the medicine anyway.  This article will hopefully put concerns of the prospective Lasik patient into perspective so that they can calmly and thoughtfully ponder having a Lasik procedure done in the future.

More than one million Lasik eye surgery procedures are done in the US every year, according to the FDA.  This arm of the national government has accumulated the following statistics for the most common side effects of the Lasik procedure.  These statistics will also vary by the physician performing the surgery, so make sure to get as much information on the prospective Lasik physician as possible.

After Lasik surgery, 1.7 percent of patients experience some glare or sensitivity to light after the operation.   This varies by patient, but this sensitivity is especially noticeable when looking at a bright light, such as a streetlight when walking at night, or other strong light and dark contrast.  Another light related side effect is a halo around a light, and this occurs in 3.5 percent of Lasik patients.

The new, corrected vision can be noticed quickly by some Lasik patients, in as little as a few hours after surgery.  Most patients that have undergone the Lasik procedure find the change is permanent within a few days.  In 2.6 percent of clients that have had a Lasik procedure done, there is persistent visual fluctuation within at least a part of their sphere of vision.

Finally, some patients do not get a fully corrected sphere of vision after their Lasik procedure.  This happens with a small number of clients, and the FDA statistics are that only 3 percent of patients have this effect.  In all or nearly all cases, the physician in charge will perform an additional Lasik procedure to improve this.

This detailing of the major permanent side effects of the Lasik eye surgery procedure should put any personal horror stories into perspective.  Notice that none of the percentages are above 3 percent, and this should bring comfort to most prospective Lasik clients.  However, it should also motivate them to look carefully at the Lasik physician’s personal record.

Lasik Eye Surgery Explained.

Lasik eye surgery is a procedure that can correct your vision by altering the physical properties of your eye. Unlike traditional surgical procedures that depend upon the skills and steadiness of the surgeon’s hand, LASIK eye surgery is computer controlled.

The more progressive LASIK surgery centers perform in-depth analysis of your eyes as an evaluation procedure to determine if you’re a good candidate for the LASIK procedure. The evaluation process, which is largely controlled by computer itself, maps the overall physical makeup of each eye. A traditional eye exam determines your visual abilities and then an exhaustive computer analysis determines if your eyes can be enhanced by the LASIK procedure.

In addition to determining whether or not you’re a good candidate for LASIK, the procedure also records quite a bit of data that’s specific to your eyes. If you choose to proceed with the LASIK eye surgery, this data is used to program the computer controlled LASIK equipment to insure that your eyes are modified exactly in the proper manner so as to provide maximum benefit.

How Your Eyes Work

The cornea of the eye is responsible for projecting light onto the retina in order to produce an image. When the cornea is not shaped properly, distortion of the image will occur. This is called a refractive error. LASIK eye surgery can correct refractive errors.

There are three primary types of refractive errors -

1) Myopia is a refractive error in which a person has trouble seeing things at a distance, but they can see things that are close up.

2) Hyperopia is when a person will be able to see things clearly at a distance but cannot see things that are close to them.

3) Astigmatism is the distortion of images caused by irregularities in the shape of the cornea.

LASIK eye surgery is also called refractive surgery because it will reshape the cornea, therefore improving the ability to focus clearly.

Not everyone is a good candidate for LASIK eye surgery. To be a good candidate for LASIK eye surgery, you have to be willing to accepts the risks that go along with this type of surgery. Your eyesight should be stable, meaning that it hasn’t changed appreciably over the past several years. Also, you shouldn’t have any existing health conditions that would put you at risk while having LASIK eye surgery.

Risks of LASIK Eye Surgery

LASIK eye surgery does carry some risks, such as loss of vision. In some extremely rare cases, the patient may lose vision due to equipment malfunction, scarring or healing related complications.

One common risk of LASIK eye surgery is that any dry eye condition that is experienced right after surgery may hamper the healing process. Signs of dryness are burning, redness and decreased vision. If this dry eye condition persists, you may have to medicate to improve tear duct function and use artificial tears to maintain the proper level of moisture. You must keep your eyes moist after LASIK surgery in order to promote healing.

Things to do Before LASIK Surgery

If you wear contact lenses, either soft contacts or rigid contacts, you should stop wearing your contacts at least three weeks before your initial evaluation by the doctor. On the day of surgery, you shouldn’t wear makeup or perfumes. Also, don’t wear any fuzzy clothing that is likely to disperse lint.

Make sure that someone goes with you on the day of surgery, since you’ll need someone to drive you home after the LASIK procedure. Before the surgery, the doctor may give you medicine to relax you and your vision may be a little blurry immediately following surgery. Also, special eye drops are administered prior to the procedure which can cause additional, but temporary blurriness.

LASIK eye surgery is relatively safe and it can free you from glasses and contacts. Before you commit to LASIK surgery, make sure that you consider all the advantages and disadvantages of having the procedure. Ask the doctor lots of questions so that you can make an informed decision about whether LASIK eye surgery is the right choice for you.

Pros and Cons for Lasik with IntraLase

Those who have had a Lasik technique done, and those who are investigating having a Lasik vision correction procedure, know that the first step of that procedure is to create a small flap in order for the Lasik physician to reshape the cornea.  This flap is created by the surgeon, and can be done using a small blade or using a laser.  Using the laser is generally called a bladeless Lasik procedure, or IntraLasik, or IntraLase.

For those that are considering a Lasik procedure, this review should be helpful in order to determine the pros and cons of the Lasik procedure using IntraLase.  One comment to be made is that the risks and complications possible using the small blade are well known and documented, since that procedure has been done for years and has a database of millions of patients.

Granted, 90% or more of all Lasik patients have no serious side effects or even minor lasting side effects, but it is true that a large part of the complications from Lasik procedures stem from the flap made with the microkeratome blade.  Over the years additional techniques have been developed to further minimize such problems from the standard Lasik procedure.

The introduction of the laser to create the flap is a new frontier in the Lasik procedure.  The laser is used in combination with state of the art software to create a flap of a pre-programmed size at a specific depth and position.  During this process, a soft suction ring holds the eye in place, but this causes no discomfort to the Lasik client.  Generally the only effect noticed by most Lasik patients is a dimming of vision in the eye being worked on for the duration of the treatment of that eye.

The use of the laser creates very small bubbles of water and carbon dioxide that serve as a good buffer between the flap and the cornea itself, and so this Lasik procedure conserves the eye very carefully.  The whole process of creating a flap for one eye takes approximately one minute.

The advantages of using a laser to make the flap for the Lasik vision correction procedure is that there is no way that the cornea can be abraded, nor any chance of the wrong size or depth of flap, since it is all pre-programmed with Lasik software.  The exact vertical edges of the flap produced using this Lasik procedure help healing, and also decrease the possibility that the flap might slip or wrinkle if the eye is accidentally bumped or rubbed during the healing process.

There are very few cons to using a laser to create the flap during a Lasik procedure.  One is that the process takes a bit longer, up to a minute.  A second reason is that the low level suction during this phase of the Lasik operation does result in eye redness for about 5% of the patients, but this goes away within a few days.  The last reason is that there is still a difference in cost between intralase eye surgery and the traditional Lasik eye surgery, but hopefully that will decrease as the years progress.

Questions about Lasik eye surgery

Many people that wear glasses or contact lenses have listened to the claims of how Lasik can give them perfect vision.  They have also heard great Lasik success stories, as well as stories from people that were not sure they had given the decision enough thought.  This guide lists the most common questions asked by people who are considering Lasik vision correction, and answers given by reputable physicians.

The first and most important question asked about Lasik is, not surprisingly, “Is Lasik safe?”  The answer is that it is normally quite a safe procedure, with success rates above 95 percent for good, experienced Lasik surgeons, and 90 percent average over all physicians that perform the Lasik procedure.  This statistic about Lasik success assumes that the patient is a good candidate for Lasik surgery.  The requirements have some specific details and should be gone over with the physician that will perform the Lasik procedure.

It is a very good idea to ask the Lasik physician which patients he has declined to perform the Lasik procedure on, to make sure that the particular physician has and operates with good standards.  Any Lasik practitioner that tries to imply that everyone that comes in to his office is a good candidate for Lasik vision correction should be viewed with some skepticism.  In any case, it is wise to interview several different physicians that perform the Lasik procedure before deciding on one.

A second frequently asked question about Lasik is “What are the possible complications from Lasik surgery?”  Common side effects are starbursts or halos when looking at a light, sensitivity to light and difficulty with glare and night vision, and some sensation that a foreign body is in the eye.  Most of these effects will pass within a few days after the Lasik procedure.  Between 1 and 3 percent of patients will have a lasting side effect such as halos or some vision fluctuation.

It is a very good idea to discuss your particular situation with the Lasik physician to determine if you might be prone to any complications.  There are also variants of the standard Lasik procedure, one of which uses additional waveforms to map out an individual eye, or techniques that only use lasers rather than a scalpel and a laser.

One question we all hesitate to ask is “Will the Lasik procedure be painful?”  Since our eyes are one of the most sensitive parts of our bodies, it is comforting to know that having Lasik vision correction is usually nearly painless.  There is often some mild discomfort after the procedure, but this is effectively controlled with medication.

“Will I have 20/20 vision once the Lasik correction is done?”  Though many patients do get nearly perfect vision, not all patients have their vision totally corrected.  You can definitely expect to have improved vision and minimized dependency on any glasses or contacts.

“What is the cost and how do I pay?”  A typical Lasik surgeon charges between $500 and $2500 per eye, depending on the patient and the surgeon.  However, a Lasik physician should be selected on experience level and track record, not on the lowest price.  Insurance rarely covers the cost of Lasik, but many Lasik centers have a type of financing program offered to their clients.

Consider Lasik eye surgery as one way to significantly improve the quality of your life.

Lasik Eye Surgery or ICL?

A number of people who are considering the Lasik procedure to correct their nearsightedness or farsightedness have of some potential problems of Lasik, and are wondering if there are other options.  Though more than 95 percent of the Lasik patients have a very successful procedure without any major side effects, there are choices for people who wish to improve their vision.  Let’s compare two, and discuss these choices with a reputable ophthalmologist.

Traditional Lasik surgery uses a scalpel to create a small flap in the eye, and then a laser reshapes the eye in order to focus accurately.  There are two more recent forms of Lasik, one that entirely uses a laser and does away with the scalpel.  Another variation uses a three dimension waveform for people with unusual eye shapes, and both of these are worth discussing with your ophthalmologist.

Those people with very thin corneas or other issues that make Lasik not a good candidate for their particular case can consider implantable contact lens surgery.  This is known as ICL in the eye surgeon’s lingo, and is a good alternative to Lasik to permanently correct vision.  These lenses function in exactly the same way as removable lenses, except that they remain permanently in the eye.  Like Lasik, they reshape the eye in order for it to focus accurately.  The patient will not feel the lens once the operation has been performed.

Lasik and ICL are similar in several ways.  Lasik can improve vision affected by nearsightedness and astigmatism, and ICL can improve these vision deficiencies also.  Both Lasik and ICL also have some of the same risks, one of these being that the correction is not accurate after the first operation is done.  Lasik is a much more frequently performed procedure, and less than 3 percent (according to the FDA) of these patients need to undergo additional surgery to further correct vision after the first Lasik procedure is done.

Like any operation, there is a chance of infection in either a Lasik procedure or an ICL operation.  Good post-operative care by the patient will minimize this and regular checkups at the Lasik or eye care center will nearly always clear this up without further complication.  In a small percentage of the cases, either Lasik or ICL patients may not achieve perfect vision and may need to continue to wear corrective eyewear, though usually not at the same strength as the original eyewear.

One advantage of ICL over Lasik is that ICL is a reversible procedure, where the implanted lens can be removed later if that becomes necessary.  Lasik involves the reshaping of the cornea to bring objects accurately into focus, and is permanent.  However, for a typical, healthy patient either Lasik eye surgery or ICL will generally bring about the desired improvement in vision.

Lasik is generally a less invasive procedure, and this is reflected in the current cost of the operation.  The current price for a Lasik procedure is between $500 and $2500 per eye, depending on the type of procedure and the presiding physician.  A typical price for ICL is between $1500 and $3000 per eye.  Do some investigation into the options offered, and select the eye care procedure that is best for your personal case.