All of the talk at the time of this writing about LASIK eye surgery creating eyesight problems for a number of people after having the procedure seems to be overblown. Some might accuse the media of attacking LASIK eye surgery as a ploy by optometrists and eye contact makers who've been slowly losing business due to LASIK surgery becoming easier and gradually more affordable. And your humble writer of this article had LASIK surgery almost exactly ten years ago when the process still took approx. two weeks for each eye to recover compared to being done on an outpatient basis now. My results were nearly perfect with no infections during recovery and very little strange long-term after-effects.
Yes, consider this a fight back against the results of the few being blown up by the media to make it look like it's the majority. It's happening more all the time in the media for both healthy foods and helpful procedures that do more good than bad if you have a little education first.
For those still exploring the possibility of having LASIK surgery, be sure you plan it carefully. There was a time in its early days when it was a lot riskier as you probably imagined. The origins of it also surprisingly go back to as far back as 1950, though not with a laser. A Spanish ophthalmologist named Jose Barraquer created an innovative technique of reshaping the eye's cornea so a severe myopia could be cured. By cutting flaps into the cornea, the reshaping was done very methodically so a 20/20 vision could be attained again in those annoyed at having to wear glasses regularly. While innovative, it was very risky surgery due to the involvement of cutting directly into the cornea with a surgical knife.
A similar procedure that was quite well-known here in the States during the 1970's and 80's was called Radial Keratotomy. That term was applied occasionally to LASIK up to the 1990's based on the same principle of reshaping the cornea by hand and knife. If you had Radial Keratotomy in the 1980's, it probably cost you (only) around $1000 per eye--basically because no laser was involved yet. My own mother had this done in the mid-1980's, which probably gave me little to no fear in having the laser procedure done more than a decade later. But the recovery period for a normal RK in the 1980's wasn't a piece of cake.
The general side-effects after an RK were, of course, redness and horrible irritation of the eye if not possible infection. Irritation in the eye was described back then as "Sands of Sahara Syndrome" (or the medical name of Diffuse Lamellar Keratitis) because it felt just like having sand in your eye that you can't remove. DLK wasn't a fun feeling to have...for about two weeks on the first eye--and the same for the second eye. If ever there was a time to be thankful human beings didn't have three eyes, it was then.
LASIK starts in the 1990's and my personal experience with the surgery in 1998...
After a number of years of testing, an excimer laser used to help reshape the cornea was given a patent and started to be pushed by eye doctors in the early 1990's. The early days of the American-invented LASIK procedure, however, was a combination of blade to cut the flap in the cornea and then the use of laser for the actual cornea reshape. For most people, of course, the procedure was out of reach because of the obvious cost involved. In 1991, it was around $8,000 per eye, even though the pushing of it talked a lot more people into it than you might imagine who couldn't really afford it. I didn't know a whole lot about it until the mid-90's when you started seeing write-ups about it in magazines and newspapers. It started to look more attractive to me and those who were beginning to get myopia already by the time they were 20.
It still boggles my mind how I became so myopic (visually and not intellectually) by the time I was out of college by age 22. Some say it's from reading too much or too close--or could just be genetics. Whatever instigated it, I didn't want to go around wearing glasses or contacts for the rest of my life. Not that I didn't look ok wearing glasses--despite usually wearing my prescription sunglasses instead (sometimes indoors) to give off that cooler look. When without my glasses, everything beyond six feet ahead of me started turning into a mosaic blur. That's a scary feeling when you have so much you want to accomplish in your 20's.
By 1997, I was financially able to pursue the possibility of having LASIK surgery outside of the hurtful price of about $4,000 an eye. By that time, LASIK has advanced considerably...or at least eliminating the need to use a blade to cut open the cornea. The laser did the entire procedure at that point. Nevertheless, it was still a risky procedure, mostly due to being an extremely exacting surgery with more complications than you thought possible. But I had good health and positive outlooks about most things, which can play a major part in getting through the whole event.
When finally having it done in the spring of 1998, it involved having to drive to the monumental medical facilities in the hills of Portland, Oregon due to the rarity of finding the expensive excimer laser in anything other than the biggest cities and clinics. That's since changed, but it cost a bundle for clinics to bring in what pretty much constituted a monstrosity back then. The procedure to do one eye took about half-an-hour--most of which was preparation. Actual laser work took maybe ten minutes. And the only thing I feared then is still apropos when having laser surgery on your eyes: An earthquake and praying we wouldn't have one.
Just like the earlier Radial Keratotomy, you felt that irritation in your eye as soon as you left the building (along with the expected subconjunctival hemorrhaging in the white areas of the eye), yet only took about a week for the first eye to heal. I had to wait a month to have my other eye done, but it was the same timeframe in healing with no major complications other than having to stay home to recover. As long as you followed all instructions, got plenty of rest and ate right--you could easily get through LASIK then with the results worth the trouble. I ultimately ended up with 20/20 vision in the end that's more or less been maintained ever since...and having a chance to wear sunglasses regularly without a prescription.
The unfair maligning of LASIK when people should blame themselves...
Had I waited five to ten years to have LASIK done, I would have saved not only some bucks, but also recovery time. In recent years, we've been hearing so many good things about the advancements of laser technology and how you can cure bad vision in almost one day for a manageable (though still expensive) cost. I also wouldn't have hesitated in the least to have it done--all because I carefully approached it from the beginning to understand what you're getting into. Now when I see people filing lawsuits against LASIK for having vision problems months or years after having the surgery done--I have to wonder if they just went in to have it done on the fly when they should have read up before taking the plunge.
Before having it done, I was warned by my eye doctor about possibly having mysterious and irreparable changes to your vision such as seeing halos around lights, excessive dryness of the eyes or even double vision. The only change I've noticed is that I see nothing but a black void for about five minutes in a dark room unlike being instantly able to see in the dark when younger. Other than that, I (and many others I know or read about) haven't had these after-effects either. Perhaps the reason is that I and they had good ophthalmologists who made sure you were a good candidate for the surgery rather than being able to correct your vision problem through other means.
The media reporting recently that more than 5% of people who have LASIK have bad eye problems afterward have to fall into the category of either not listening to the risks or having a bad ophthalmologist wanting the patient's money. Both cases are more than possible--especially when 5% is still a small number--yet enough to catch attention of those who are probably hellbent on bringing down LASIK because of how it could literally change the vision of the world.
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As I insinuated at the beginning of this defense, there's plenty of helpful procedures and things you can consume in the world that can help make you live a better and healthier life. When institutions around a long time see a threat to their financial well-being, it's more than likely they'll step in and discredit those things taking away their business.
Take it from me, a successful LASIK patient from its slightly more primitive days: It's worth your while to investigate the procedure if you hate wearing glasses or contacts. Your ophthalmologist should be able to tell you if it's safe to have done based on the condition of your eye and letting you know that the highest quality laser (experts say with "wavefront-guided" software) is available in your local area.
Source: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/736283/lasik_eye_surgery_contro...