Scarring from a previous eye injury or surgery can impede the surgeon's ability to perform the operation safely. Other eye diseases that affect the cornea or infections must be resolved before you can get LASIK. In some cases, you may find that because of eye diseases or another procedure, you cannot get LASIK.
Certain conditions, such as autoimmune diseases (e.g., lupus, rheumatoid arthritis), immunodeficiency states (e.g., HIV) and diabetes, and some medications (e.g., retinoic acid and steroids) may prevent proper healing after a refractive procedure.
How Often Does LASIK Not Work? Typically less than 5 percent of the time, LASIK doesn't meet the patient's expectations for vision improvement. For those patients, even after healing, there may be some residual nearsightedness, farsightedness, or astigmatism.
Occasionally, a surgeon doesn't remove enough corneal tissue. As a result, the patient's vision, even after a reasonable healing period, is not fully corrected. When this happens, it's usually on nearsighted patients. To fully finish correction, you may need another LASIK procedure within a year of the first.
The intraoperative complication rate of Laser in situ keratomileusis (LASIK) has been reported to be in between 0.7-6.6%.
3% of patients have serious problems after LASIK, such as dry eyes or infection. 90% of LASIK patients experience 20/20 vision after surgery. Furthermore, 99% of patients achieve 20/40 vision. Only 3% of patients regret getting LASIK.
The surgery is not without complications, but it is rare for any extreme issues to arise. One paper has found that the majority of Lasik recipients were happy with their results, with only 1.2% reporting dissatisfaction.
As we mentioned above, the laser makes permanent changes to the shape of the cornea. This cannot be reversed; however, sometimes vision can continue to change as a person ages. In this case, you may notice changes to your vision over the years even if you've undergone Lasik surgery.
Are there any risks? Most people have some visual side effects and discomfort in the weeks or months after surgery but these should gradually settle down. Serious complications are more common after RLE than after laser eye surgery or PIOL surgery. About 1 in 500 people have significant loss of vision after RLE.
What is the LASIK complication rate? The LASIK complication rate is less than 1%. LASIK complications include infections as well as dislocation of the corneal flap that's made during the surgery. Surgical complications from laser vision correction are extremely rare.
If your vision is still noticeably blurred three months after LASIK, you may need an enhancement. To determine whether you're a good candidate for a LASIK enhancement, your eye doctor will re-evaluate your corneas with the same methods used prior to your first LASIK procedure.
A patient that demands a second LASIK procedure with cataracts can't be helped with LASIK. This is because cataracts affect the natural lens of the eye, while LASIK reshapes the cornea.
Yes, it is possible to get LASIK twice. However, it is extremely uncommon to need the surgery twice, and the majority of individuals who undergo LASIK enjoy lasting improved vision after just one procedure.
Generally, there is no cap or specific number of times a person can undergo LASIK surgery.
LASIK is permanent, but eyesight can and does change, even after laser surgery. There are many potential causes of eyesight changes after refractive surgery.
Published medical studies have shown a persistent decrease in corneal cells (keratocytes) after LASIK. Doctors speculate that this loss might lead to long-term problems. Corneal nerves responsible for tear production are severed and destroyed during LASIK.
Generally speaking, most LASIK eye surgeons agree on 25-40 as the ideal age range for LASIK eye surgery candidacy for a few reasons. By the age of 25, eyeglasses and contact lens prescriptions have most likely stabilized. A stable prescription is one of the hallmarks of a good LASIK candidate.
Answer: Blurred vision that clears with use of artificial tears is generally caused by dry eyes. Dry eyes can last for six months after LASIK and in rare cases longer.
Once the full healing process after Eye LASIK surgery has been completed, your optimum visual acuity will be reached. After 3 to 6 months your eyesight will have reached its optimum benefit from the surgery. In many cases 20/20 vision is achieved, but some patients find they need reading glasses for close work.
Various reported studies report the LASIK percent success rate is at least 96%. The American refractive surgery council reports an even higher 99% of successful Lasik eye surgery.
LASIK is a type of refractive eye surgery. In general, most people who have laser-assisted in situ keratomileusis (LASIK) eye surgery achieve 20/20 vision or better, which works well for most activities. But most people still eventually need glasses for driving at night or reading as they get older.
LASIK and other procedures also can sometimes cause irregular astigmatism, with accompanying blurred and/or distorted vision. Fortunately, for most people who have a less-than-perfect vision after refractive surgery, these problems are quite mild and usually tolerable.
LASIK eye surgery is an effective type of laser-assisted refractive surgery that can be used to treat common vision problems including astigmatism, myopia (nearsightedness), and hyperopia (farsightedness).
Recurrence of myopia after myopic LASIK reduces the outcome of the procedure. Important causes include post-LASIK ectasia, regression of myopia, accommodative strain, and lens or axial length changes.
Being 40 or older doesn't disqualify you from getting LASIK and enjoying the benefits. The best LASIK eye surgery candidates are adults that have had a stable vision prescription for two years.