Also known as laser surgery, it’s a surgical procedure that a laser beam to improve vision by reshaping the surface of your eye – also know as the cornea. It improves vision by changing the shape of the cornea so that it can better focus images on the eye’s retina. Tissue is removed by the laser so that the cornea is flattened (correcting nearsightedness), or removed in a manner that flattens the cornea (correcting farsightedness), or the laser smooths out the cornea’s irregularities (correcting astigmatism). PRK and LASIK are the two major kinds of laser eye surgert. Both procedures use lasers, but PRK removes the top layer of the cornea prior to reshaping, whereas LASIK folds it over and then replaces it. Due to removing the top layer, it will take longer for PRK to heal.

Although any surgical procedure entails risks, the FDA recognizes laser eye surgery as being safe and effective. Numerous studies indicate that minor difficulties occur three to five percent of the time (such as glare at nighttime). Further, there is less than a one percent chance for any loss of vision at all. There are no known cases of laser surgery causing blindness and outcomes are overwhelmingly good.

With LASIK, both eyes are done at the same time in almost all cases. PRK takes longer to heal and as a result it’s frequently recommended that you have one done and then wait a couple of weeks to have the other eye done.

Yes, definitely. In the past, manual incisions made by a blade, rather than a laser, were used to correct vision. Compared with current laser surgery technology, success rates were lower and complications were higher.

Since anesthetic drops are placed in each eye before surgery, you will experience no pain. After surgery, Many LASIK patients report only mild discomfort for a day or so. Your surgeon can prescribe pain medication if needed. PRK involves more discomfort because the top layer of the cornea was actually removed and can thus take up to week to heal. It’s rare for anything other than very mild discomfort that lasts only a few hours. This is easily manageable.

Quicker than you’d think. Both eyes will take less than 30 minutes.

Your eye doctor will make this determination for you. The following guidelines are general indicators of being a good candidate for LASIK:

• You are in good health overall.
• You are not pregnant or nursing.
• Your vision has not changed in the last 12 months.
• You have healthy eyes and thick enough corneas.
• Your vision correction prescription isn’t too strong. Your eye doctor will make this decision.

You can drive as soon as your vision clears, which in many cases can be the day after surgery. With PRK, it could take several days due to the longer healing time.

For most LASIK patients, it can be the next day. After PRK, due to the longer healing time most surgeons recommend you wait two or three days.

Give it at least a week. And an important thing to note is you’ll need to throw outyou’re your old makeup in order to prevent infection after your surgery.

Dry eyes, as well as experiencing halos or starbusts around lights at night are the most common side effects. However, they almost always disappear over time and using eye drops can minimize these effects.

This can be different based on your particular doctor and how extensive your correction was. Generally speaking, most people go back the next day, then a week later, a month later and perhaps three months later.

After surgery, most patients will be able to see clearly with the need for contacts or glasses.. That said, there are certain activities for which you may still need your glasses or contacts, with night driving being the most common one.

Many different factors come into play when trying to set a cost for LASIK and/or PRK (see our page on costs), which makes it challenging to quote exact numbers. However, generally speaking, the cost varies between $1,000 and $3,000 per eye, with the nationwide overall average being $2,200 per eye.

These are the very simplified major steps for LASIK:

• An extremely thin flap is cut out of our cornea using a laser instrument called a “femtosecond laser”.
• This flap gets folded back in order to expose the cornea.
• Very small amounts of tissue are then removed, by and “excimer laser”, which reshapes the cornea and improve the ability to focus.
• The flap is then laid back in place to seal the cornea. No bandages or stiches are needed.

For most children the answer is no. The reason is that vision changes can progress throughout childhood and one of the primary conditions for being a laser eye surgery candidate  is that your vision is stable. This doesn’t happen until after the age of 18. Until then, glasses or contacts should be used to correct vision. That said, there are two cases which may require a young child to have laser corrective eye surgery:

1. The child has an extremely high refractive error and can’t be trusted to keep their glasses on.
2. The child has extremely poor eyesight, known as anisometric amblyopia, and conventional approaches to correction have not been successful.

However, in both cases all other methods should be explored first, with laser surgery being the last resort, since it will in all probability not result in a permanent solution.

Surprisingly, LASIK can indeed result in better than 20/20 vision for some people. But remember, 20/20 vision is not LASIK surgery’s goal. LASIK surgery aims for a visual acuity of between 20/20 and 20/40, which is considered within the normal range. If fact, you may not want vision that is better than 20/20 because it can lead to eye strain, disorientation and headaches, just like you’d get with glasses that have too high of a prescription.

Yes, you will, for two reasons:

• General anesthesia isn’t used due to how short the procedure is – usually only five to 10 minutes per eye at the most.
• The cost of LASIK surgery is already high. The cost would increase greatly if general anesthesia was used, and it’s something that is entirely unnecessary.

If you need a second surgery after your primary LASIK surgery, this is called an “enhancement” or sometimes a “correction”. While relatively rare, there are several reasons an enhancement may be needed:

• The vision problem was undercorrected.
• Or, overcorrection can occur and cause eye strain.
• An infection set in as a result of the first surgery.
• There were some problems with healing of the corneal flap.

A second surgery can often help these issues or eliminate them entirely. Overall, the most common reason for an enhancement is undercorrection for nearsighted people.

However, your surgeon will likely not do an enhancement right away, as vision can sometimes continue to improve for several months after LASIK.

Numerous studies indicate that after 10 years over 98 percent of people having LASIK are still happy with their results

The primary reason your vision may change over time is simply due to the normal process of aging. With aging, the muscles weaken that control the lenses, along with a hardening of the lenses themselves. This results in difficulty seeing objects up close. The medical term for this is “presbyopia” and it’s a normal part of the aging process for everyone. It’s the reason why many older people need reading glasses.

Sadly, LASIK can neither prevent presbyopia from happening, nor correct it once it does happen as a result of aging. LASIK can not prevent this from happening, nor can it correct it once it happens with age. The good news is that even though your eyes may change over time, your vision will never go back to as bad as it was before your LASIK.

Even though LASIC cannot prevent or cure presbyopia, it doesn’t prevent you from other procedures that can. Conditions as a result of the aging process can be improved by other procedures such as lens replacement or corneal implants.

You can take comfort in knowing there simply isn’t anything you can do during your LASIK surgery that will cause it to go south. First of all, numbing eye drops will be used in each eye, plus you can also have anxiety reducing medication if you need it. Second, a small device will hold our eyelids open and prevent blinking. Third, a tracking system is built into the laser equipment, which enables it to accurately follow your eyes during surgery even if they move. Lastly, for strong and sudden movements such as coughing or a sneeze, the laser has a safety feature that turns it off immediately before any damage can occur.

You’ll be given goggles after your surgery to protect your eyes while sleeping. You should contact your doctor right away if you do rub your eyes without your goggles on in order to have your eyes checked for damage.

There are no known cases of LASIK causing blindness and it is an overwhelmingly safe surgery. In fact, clinical research has shown that vision loss due to infection is much higher with contact lenses than with LASIK.

No, it will not. LASIK surgery can still be done even if you’ve had surgery for cataracts. However, you may not need it. With todays cataract surgery techniques, you can have your lenses replaced with ones customized to correct nearsightedness, farsightedness, and even astigmatism. They can even correct presbyopia (hardening of the lenses due to age).

This is called “refractive cataract surgery” and can reduce or even eliminate the need for glasses. If minor refractive errors are still there, LASIK or PRK laser surgery can be performed after a period of time to further correct these.

In almost all cases, it’s safe to wear contact lenses after LASIK. You may find that rigid gas permeable contacts provide better vision than soft contacts.

Your LASIK surgeon will recommend that you wait about three months after laser surgery before being fitted with new contactsKeep in mind that it can be more difficult to fit contacts after you’re undergone LASIK because of the altered curvature of the front surface of our eyes. This means you may want to find an eye doctor who specializes in hard to fit eyes.

LASIK won’t correct a lazy eye for most people. However, there can be one exception. If the underlying cause of the lazy eye (the formal term is Amblyopia) is a large difference in refractive error between the two eyes, contact lenses can be a good solution. However, some people are unable to wear contacts and for them it’s possible that Lasik surgery can correct the dissimilar refractive errors and thus correct the lazy eye. Only your eye doctor can determine if this is a possible solution for you.  

Because LASIK surgery involves the removal of some corneal tissue, detailed measurements of your cornea must be made to determine if you have adequate corneal thickness for surgery to be safely performed. If these measurements indicate an unusually thin cornea, you may not be a good candidate for LASIK. Your eye surgeon will make this determination

Keratoconus is a degenerative disease that causes cornea thinning. As a result, LASIK is not usually recommended.

For most cases, the answer is yes. LASIK can fully and permanently correct astigmatism. Since astigmatism is simply a refractive error – like farsightedness and nearsightedness – and not an eye disease, it can be corrected with eyeglasses, contact lenses and LASIK surgery. Even severe cases of astigmatism can be corrected with LASIK, although the cost may be higher and follow-up LASIK enhancements may be necessary. 

There are two major reasons why LASIK is not recommended during pregnancy.

1. LASIK results become less predictable due to hormonal changes that can occur during pregnancy. These changes can also affect the after surgery healing process.
2. Some of the drugs used in LASIK may present risks to the development of the baby.

While there are some circumstances that might make LASIK a possibility, the risk is still high and you should consult with and let your obstetrician make this decision. 

Some people might see halos, starburst or mild glare at night or in low light conditions following surgery, but these are almost always temporary and seldom interfere with driving at night. With today’s laser technology, these symptoms will usually only last from a few days to a week. It is extremely rare for them to be permanent. 

LASIK surgery almost always has a rapid recovery time. In fact, most people achieve good vision the same day after surgery and their eyes will feel pretty normal within a day. That said, the absolute best vision can take two to three months, especially for patients with higher prescriptions.

Absolutely not. They will remain looking exactly the same. 

The difference is in how the LASIK flap is created. Traditional LASIK uses a microkeratome – a mechanical device with a blade – to create the corneal flap. All-Laser LASIK is a newer method that uses a laser device – known as a laser keratome – to create the flap. Both methods are effective and there is a split opinion among eye surgeons as to which way is best.