It's time to stop being vague about things. Don't be caught
in the rush of excitement and enthusiasm that so clearly
beckons to you without glasses or contact lenses.
It's a long road to get there and maybe you shouldn't
even try. LASIK is not for everyone who
happens to be stricken with a current need for plastic
lenses.
Sure, LASIK excimer laser surgery works. It works very,
very well. But, it does have its complications and one
of them is the lack of a guarantee of success. It is predictable
but it is not perfect. Everything is couched in percentages,
i.e., chance of 20/20, chance of 20/40, chance of significant
haze, chance of additional surgeries, chance of an infection,
etc.
If you are a person who can firmly understand what percentages
are, you are ahead of the game. For instance, say your
right eye is -4.50 +0.75 axis 91 degrees. That is a moderate
degree of myopia and mild astigmatism. Here's the way this
eye stacks up:
- Probability of 20/20 vision : 80 % [CustomVue LASIK=
98%]
- Probability of 20/40 vision : 98% [CustomVue LASIK
= 100%]
- Chance of significant glare : 1%
- Need for additional operation(s) : 5% [CustomVue
LASIK = 1%]
- Chance of infection : 0.03%
When the eye is more nearsighted, the possibility of 20/20
vision decreases, etc. What all this means is that you
are gambling with your vision. The odds are definitely
in your favor and the risks are few, but there are going
be some patients who fall outside the 'normal range' of
predictability. Sometimes this is due to miscalculations,
individual variations, or surgeon inexperience, but for
the most part this is just being lucky or not being lucky.
You must understand what percentages mean; if you are
the one out of one thousand, that's one out of one
for you.
If you simply want to see better without glasses or contact
lenses, you are going to be happy. At that point the percentages
are tremendously in your favor. If you want to see as well
after LASIK surgery as you currently do with glasses or
contact lenses, do NOT have excimer laser surgery. The
predictability is not 100%. Wait. Things will get better.
Just like computers. You have been nearsighted a long time;
there's no big rush.
There is also that problem of loss of best corrected visual
acuity. It may not make a difference to some people but
what it means is that a small number of persons will never,
ever, ever be able to see 20/20 in that eye again. With
or without glasses. Is this important? Well, do you fly
an airplane, value your distance vision, operate on people's
eye? If you do, you want the best vision possible even
if it means getting a boost from those plastic things again.
How important is this risk to you?
And what's wrong with being nearsighted anyway? I'm nearsighted.
I'm not having the surgery. There are advantages to being
mildly myopic. I don't wear glasses in the office. I can
read in bed, check out the morning newspaper, and do spin
hook kicks, all without glasses. It's cool... As you may
know, most persons over the age of forty requires glasses
for reading. Not me! I'm nearsighted! I'm good for a long
time. There are advantages...
There's also the matter of money. Sure, glasses and contacts
cost money too. Still a lot of money...
The bottom line is that this decision should not be made
lightly. You should get a ton of information (I have had
a patient come in with a very large, 3 ring binder full
of refractive surgery webpages, reprints, etc.) You should
have all of your questions answered. You should be able
to talk in a straightforward fashion with your eye surgeon.
You should understand, understand, understand. Those eyes
of yours are the only ones that you will ever get... |
