LASIK Unadvisable for Pregnant Women

If you are pregnant, plan to become pregnant, or have just given birth and are still breastfeeding, you are not a candidate for LASIK. You will need to wait at least two or three months after you finish breastfeeding to consider laser eye surgery.

During and immediately after pregnancy, women manufacture hormones that cause them to retain fluid in their body. While this fluid is generally more noticeable in other areas of the body, the swelling can occur anywhere, including the lens of your eye. This swelling in your eye can distort your vision, making you slightly more nearsighted or astigmatic than normal. These changes in hormone levels continue until after a woman has finished breastfeeding.

In LASIK, your eye surgeon reshapes your cornea using a Wavefront device to create a 3D map of your eye's irregularities. If you have this procedure while pregnant, the map of your eye's irregularities will be incorrect as a result of the additional hormonal swelling. This can lead to either an overcorrection or undercorrection in the treatment of your eyes.

It is also possible for the drugs used during the LASIK procedure to damage a baby. Mild sedatives, antibiotic eye drops, and cortisone eye drops are all used during the eye surgery. These drugs are absorbed by your blood stream and can harm a growing fetus, especially in the first trimester. More information is needed to determine whether these drugs can harm a baby while breastfeeding. To play it safe, it is not advisable to expose your newborn to such a risk.

If you are planning on having children in the near future, you need to discuss this with your eye surgeon to make sure that it is safe for you to go ahead with the LASIK procedure. Most likely, he will advise you to put off the surgery until after your pregnancy.

You can use the links at the bottom of this page to find a qualified LASIK surgeon in your area.