Lasik Eye Surgery helps people with glasses reduce their dependency on glasses or contact lenses. Lasik eye surgery in majority of cases enjoys a high level of success and failure rates are about 1% per eye. Though the success rate is high but chances of other complications may affect your vision, which are not considered’ as failures. Like, the patient’s vision may be reset after the surgery as 20/20, but she could experience visual disturbances like ghost images or haloing.
Sometimes it has also been seen that the patient and surgeon have different ideas of what success means. Unreasonable expectations from Lasik eye surgery also cause disappointment.
Lasik is relatively a new surgical procedure, and is undergoing research constantly to ensure better results.
There are basically three types of refractive errors: myopia, hyperopia and astigmatism. They may exist independently in patients or as combination. Combinations of myopia and astigmatism or hyperopia and astigmatism are quite common. Glasses & contact lenses are developed to overcome these imperfections.
As far as surgical procedures are concerned they help improving the focusing power of the eye. This procedure is called refractive surgery. In LASIK surgery, controlled removal of corneal tissue with the help of a special laser reshapes the cornea. This results in changing or re arranging its focusing power.
People who want to opt for lasik eye surgery have to be risk takers first of all. Sometimes certain complications are unavoidable in some patients. The other risk involved with lasik eye surgery is that it may jeopardize your career, as some jobs do not allow people on whom refractive procedures are performed. It is advisable that before you get this surgery done, you check with your employer/professional society/military. Another important thing to note is that most medical insurances will not bear or share the cost for refractive surgery. The cost is significant though its coming down very much as more and more research is being done to improve it.
People who should avoid or not opt for lasik eye treatment are the ones who are in their 20s or younger, (currently, no lasers are approved for LASIK on individuals under 18), whose hormones are fluctuating due to disease such as diabetes, Pregnant or breastfeeding women, people who are under medications which may cause fluctuations in vision etc. Before deciding on it, it is advisable that you have a detailed discussion with your doctor about your general health and related problems and issues.
Common problems that people may undergo after surgery are Dry Eye Syndrome; some patients have also reported to lose vision, some patients develop debilitating visual symptoms, sometimes under-treatment or over-treatment has also been reported. LASIK Eye Surgery is a relatively new technology so data as such is not available which can help us evaluate the procedure in the broader sense.
