What's All the Flap About?

The mass media is heating up over the small percentage of LASIK patients who experience complications afterwards, such as dry eyes, glare or halos around light sources, and difficulty with driving at night.

After more than a decade of increasing numbers of people having LASIK and being delighted with their new clear vision, suddenly the LASIK downside is being emphasized. All surgeries have risks and complications. A small percentage of people always has some trouble after a surgery, which is why no surgery is ever guaranteed to give a perfect outcome 100% percent of the time.

LASIK Candidacy

In the early LASIK days, it's true that some eye surgeons rushed to offer it to as many people as possible, and failed to screen their patients adequately. It has been said a million times that LASIK is not for everybody. To qualify as a good LASIK candidate, you must:

• Have a stable prescription
• Be over 18 years old
• Have no autoimmune disease such as Lupus, or any condition that might interfere with healing
• Have appropriate corneal thickness and pupil size
• Be within a certain range in the severity of your myopia or hyperopia
• Preferably not be a diabetic
• Have realistic expectations

There are more requirements, and each individual must be carefully tested, examined, and questioned. No two human eyes are exactly the same, and each individual responds to surgery in their own way, healing quickly or not so quickly, following the doctor's directions or perhaps not, etc. There are many variables that go into a successful LASIK outcome.

Choosing a Good LASIK Surgeon

If you would like to have a LASIK surgery, you need to do some homework first. Read up about LASIK, and look around for a highly qualified and highly experienced eye surgeon. Do not choose the one who charges the least. A low fee will usually indicate that some corners are being cut at that doctor's office. Perhaps staff is not fully trained, or instruments are not sterilized often enough, or patients are not well screened. LASIK equipment is expensive and the medical skill required to do it well does not come cheap either.

So do yourself a great favor and take time over choosing your LASIK surgeon. Ask to speak to some previous patients. Check the doctor's standing with the American Board of Ophthalmology. Ask each doctor you consult with how many LASIK procedures he or she has performed, and expect the answer to be in the thousands.

The mass media thrives on negative news, and usually magnifies it to dramatic proportions, as this sells newspapers and increases TV audiences. However, despite the current flap, LASIK has overwhelming success when it is performed on good candidates by a qualified ophthalmologist.