Slashdot Mirror
Laser Vision Surgery for Developers?
cyclops asks: "I have been contemplating about going for LASIK surgery for a couple of years. I want to get rid of my dependency on glasses or lenses because I really find them cumbersome. The main thing that is stopping me now is that like you, programming is my livelihood and thus I spent a major part of my day staring into the monitor. I have readthat there is always a certain percentage of patients not regaining 20/20 vision but it's OK for them since most of them don't need that sharp vision during work. I am about to consult with a LASIK surgeon but I would love to hear anecdotal evidence about your experiences, to hear if it works out for you eventually. (I have stable myopia of -5.50 and astimagtism of -1.00 for 3 years already)." Ask Slashdot has handled this issue in the past in two previous articles: this one from 1999, and a related article from 2000. With at least 2 years since the last time this question was posed, how has medical technology improved in this aspect? For those unwilling or unable to take advantage of Laser Surgery, have other viable alternatives arisen in the past two years?
... a couple of the developers I work with have had corrective eye surgery and have wonderful things to say about it. One fellow even had the new LADIK procedure and was back at work programming the next day. Yes, there's always risks, but driving to work in a metropolitan area is probably less healthy in the long run.
I know this may seem difficult to believe, but bad vision is usually due to chronic tension in the muscles of the eyes. There are methods available to reduce your chronic muscle tension. There is a book about this; I will see if I can find the title.
Ever considered life as a bat? Well then you should consider forsaking your lousy eyes and getting Sonar!
To make a pun demonstrates the highest understanding of a language
Lasik can harm your night vision, among other things. For such a distance-specific task as programming, you're probably much better off with glasses (and much safer).
I don't know much about this site, but I'd just heard about it: http://www.lasiktruth.com/. Look around, I've heard a lot of bad stuff second hand about it.
+5:offtopic,but anti-American
There are reversable alternatives, such as Intacts, but they may not work with your degree of astigmatism.
from BABF13 - Bart to the Future Ralph: Mr. Flanders, your blindedid. Flanders: Yeah, I never shoulda had that trendy laser surgery, it was great at first, but at the 10 year mark your eyes fall out.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
i stared into the fiber coming from our t3 drop, and my vision was miraculously cured. well, except for the one dark spot that has a burned in backwards "NORTEL" logo on it.
At present, opticians measure and correct defocus and astigmatism. The eye has many higher orders of aberration (spherical aberration, coma, trefoil etc), which are not measured and are not corrected. The problem is that, for laser surgery, the astigmatism and defocus are corrected over a small area of the pupil, smaller than the area of the dilated pupil. Outside this area, aberrations are exacerbated, and not currently measurable (although there is a lot of work in this area). Hence, if you have laser eye surgery, your corrected vision will (barring complications), be fine during the day or when in a brightly lit area, but vision may be worse than pre-correction at night. Doesn't sound too bad, unless you drive at night...
A friend of mine is a senior uni researcher in optometry. She's told me that the flap of cornea that they open up in order to do the surgery never heals properly and that even mild trauma is able to re-open the cut. This can result in infection, scarring and permanent damage. She wears glasses and preaches openly against this technology.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
The actress:
Mariette Hartley
The website:
http://www.seeclearlymethod.com/
I don't know what the odds are that such a thing would happen for a given laser eye surgery. Personally, I think that if there is any chance at all that a cosmetic surgery will prevent me from doing serious computer work, then the cosmetic surgery is not worth it.
=Brian
There is nothing so good that someone, somewhere, will not hate it.
I just went to my eye doctor last week and asked about Lasik. HE wouldn't even recommend because he thought there was not enough case work on long term effects of Lasik. He was concerned about possible long-term corneal degeneration risks, since Lasik cuts away part of your cornea.
OTOH, I had previously thought that the biggest problem would be that some patients experience "halo" effects, especially at night. He said that was mainly due to other techniques based on RK, but not so much with Lasik.
BTW, as an optometrist, he was offered Lasiks for free, for himself, but didn't take it for these reasons.
Me, I wear glasses, ones with a pretty thick lens on the left at that. The frames get a little in the way of my peripheral vision. But I don't want Lasik. Why? Because of the failure rate--even if it's somehow down to only 1%, and I'm not sure it is.
Forget worrying about not achieving the 20/20 vision you want and that many people get from it. Worry instead about the real risk of corneal damage that will leave your vision worse than it was before, with permanent starbursts and haloes like you're looking through scratched, scuffed glasses all the time.
Will this happen to you? Probably not. In fact, if you have the sort of vision that Lasik corrects, you have a well over 95% chance of getting the great vision without glasses that you want. It's just that if you draw the short straw, you could find your ability to read a screen pretty thoroughly ruined, with or without glasses.
Weigh the benefits against the risks, and if you decide to do it, note that most surgeons have you sign a boilerplate contract that bars you from suing them if your vision is ruined. Who's the real winner?
Had the procedure done -- both eyes on the same day! -- and it was fantastic. My night vision was never very good, so I don't mourn the loss, and in fact, my depth perception has improved since getting rid of my glasses. After a year, I'm 20/20 in one eye, 20/15 in the other -- a vast improvement over my pre-surgery vision. (And my good eye now was my good eye then, too.)
I notice my eyes getting a little tired near the end of the day, which is normal for folks with naturally good vision. And I know that I'll need reading glasses eventually. Big deal. I can see my wife in the morning, swim with my kids, fall asleep while reading, wear decent sunglasses, etc... All trivial things when you've got normal vision, but oh-so-worth it when you've needed glasses for 20+ years just to find your frelling shoes.
Oh yeah, it's worth it. Find a decent surgeon -- research! ask questions!
My story is anectdotal at best, but I can't recommend the surgery strongly enough. I spend most days staring at the computer screen (I remember talking to my eye doctor suggesting that I spend 14-16 hours looking at the computer, he replied "in a week?", "No, a day..."). Both of my parents also had the surgery with success which gave me more confidence to have it.
I had laser surgery (LASIK) last spring. It was a fantastic experience. I basically have had contacts forever (-4.5 in one eye, -4.25 in the other, slight astigmatism in one but I don't know the number value for it). I went in for a consult and they deemed me an ideal candidate after checking my vision and doing some measurement of the size of my cornea (mine is thicker than average which is good for them because they effectively reshape your eye by getting rid of some of the cornea).
I went in for the surgery on an afternoon. I had both eyes done on that day. I basically sat in this chair and focused on a little red light. They put some numbing drops in my eyes and then lowered this eyeball sized tubish thing over my eye. It basically sucked onto and grabbed hold of my eye, then a blade comes out of that to slice a thin layer of the cornea. The surgeon then lifts up that layer and the world goes super foggy. I focused as best I could on the red light (with the sucker thing on my eye, I couldn't have moved it anyway). And they basically fired a laser at my eye for 50 seconds or so. Then they flipped the cornea layer back over my eye and the world became clear. They then did the same process for the other eye. It did not hurt in any way during the process.
When it was done, I could immediately see better but it did hurt to look at bright light so I basically got patches over my eyes and was driven home. I took some Tylenol PM and went to sleep with these plastic things covering my eyes to protect from rubbing during the night.
The next morning I drove back to the eye center without my glasses. At that point my eyes were about 20/40 or 20/30. I went to work that day as well so I basically missed an afternoon of work. I had to wear the eye covers at night for the next few nights. Over the next week or so as my eyes completely healed, my vision became 20/15 in both eyes. It has been that way ever since. I do notice slightly more haloing (halos around point light sources) at night but nothing that might not have been there before and I just didn't notice.
I can't recommend it strongly enough. Not having contacts has been a pleasure and the whole surgery experience was a breeze. The worst part of it was the anxiety as they did the surgery but it only lasts about 15 minutes and was well worth it.
Honk if you love Justice! -The Tick
If it's anecdotal evidence, conjecture, speculation, or just good old innuendo your interested in then Ask Slashdot is the place for you.
I'm with Brian Barsky's OPTICAL group at UC Berkeley. (http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/optical/ )
We are currently doing research on how to better describe the damage caused by laser surgery.
You see why laser surgery repairs correctable damage (damage that can be otherwise corrected with lenses)
it also causes uncorrectable damage... more or less a "corner" where the laser stops hitting the eye.
this "corner" gets more profound after the eye begins to heal from the surgery and tissue regenerates.
It eventually causes people to have intense glare from light sources on the side of their faces (i.e. headlights when you drive at night)
I would recommend NOT getting this surgery.
Unfortunately not too terribly much progress has been made in consistently describing this damage (reports cite perhaps 30th order zernike polynomials for approximation of these problems...which is not helpful at all in describing the shape of the corner)
We are hoping to better describe quantitatively the damage caused by this surgery.
Anyhow I suggest you use a reversible method for correcting your vision (eg glasses/contacts)
--Daniel
Vega Strike Lead Developer
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/
I had LASIK 2 years ago and have no night vision problems. For the first couple months, there was a slight 'ghosting' effect around bright lights at night. That has completely disappeared. My night vision before the surgery was excellent and it continues to be so.
"The advanced societies of the future will be driven by competing systems of psychopathology." -JG Ballard
How old is the one who has undergone the first LASIK operation? I'm asking this because it isn't very certain if there won't be implications, say, after 20 years.
I don't mind glasses but i'd love to "lose" my 5 (l) and 4 (r) degrees of myopia, however: who can give me solid advice whether this will be save in the very long run (more than a decade).
[offtopic comments: I've thought of the LASIK operation (in fact, in Crete is most of the research done, which is near me) and my parents have given me the green light&money for the operation, but i'll be staying with my glasses.]
Looking for people to chat about multicopters, coding, music. skype: gtsiros
I would recommend LASIK for overall lifestyle improvement but not just to see a computer monitor better.
.5 diopter doesn't significantly worsen your distance vision, except at night, and it makes focusing close much more comfortable. Some people cannot attain sharp focus at night anyway, so what does it matter?
... one of the best things you can do is work in front of an LCD monitor instead. Makes a huge difference eyestrain-wise.
If you can't see what you're doing when you get out of bed in the morning (5 diopters is borderline for that) then LASIK will help you. My SO was about 8 diopters and it made a big difference.
The downsides aren't all that bad but there are tradeoffs. I have a 3-4 diopter correction and I have the option to work on a laptop without my glasses or contacts on. Also my vision corrects to 20/15-17. I would not expect such a good result from LASIK. My expectations would be more like 20/40 which would probably be significantly worse in dim light and better in bright light. If you can focus sharply in the dark now, you will probably lose that after LASIK.
I would not expect serious adverse health consequences from LASIK but they are possible.
I think that all in all LASIK will probably make it harder for you to stare at a CRT all day, but it may greatly improve other aspects of your life. Think about it carefully beforehand.
You might consider corrective optics that undercorrect your eyesight, specifically for working near CRTs. Being undercorrected by
Actually, I say working near CRTs
-joseph
I had the surgery about 8 months ago. I have 20/15 vision in both eyes now, and contrary to what some people have said, my night vision is fantastic. I couldn't be happier.
Even staring at a computer all day and half the night doesn't bother me.
About my only minor complaint, is that my eyes get a little dry, and I have to carry wetting drops with me. I understand that about a year post surgery, this goes away, and after 8 months, I need the drops less and less often.
I would highly recommend it. Just make sure you see a reputable doctor, and talk to some of his/her previous patients. That's what I did, and they were all quite happy.
It cost about $2800, but I would pay it again.
Cheers!
I just had LASIK surgery on both eyes on Thursday. So far I have experienced no problems at all. Granted, my eyes weren't very bad to begin with. I have another friend who had his eyes done at the same clinic and he also has not experienced any problems. No sands, halos, night-vision loss, nothing. I think the key is to find a reputable surgeon and to follow all the post-surgery directions properly. It's a long healing process, so we'll have to see how mine go.
--
"Karma can only be portioned out by the cosmos." - Homer Simpson [1F10]
His wife, however, and two other patients had their vision severely damaged due to a bad instrument. Since the surgeries are quick (just a few minutes), it wasn't noticed.
They only do one eye at a time, just in case of something like this. So, only one eye is affected. However, she can't sit in front a computer very long and is subject to severe headaches. Even with glasses, her vision in that eye is poor.
Is it worth the risk? Well, there is only one person that can answer that question: you. Personally, I'm willing to take it, but would rather go for intacts than LASIK because my night vision sucks ass as it is. Unlike my boss, who has good night vision even after the surgery, my night vision sucks ass without any surgery. Since I'm planning to get my pilot's license, I'd rather go for intacts.
My father had LASIK done a few years back, he is a coder (so am I) and has not had any issues with it.
From what I know he has not had any issues with the surgery and his eye sight.
I would say go for it. For the most part its a safe and harmless procudure. I personnaly dont need it, but know many people who have done it, are a VERY happy they did.
Ryan
Ortho-K. They are contacts that reshape your eyes. Eventually you only have to ear them at night or only once a week/month. Can give you better then 20/20, no side effects, reversible if desired, no risks really! I have too much astigmatism for it right now. But I'm waiting!
A friend of mine tried to have Lasik done... Apparently they shine a bright light in your eyes to dialate you pupils.
He had a seziure.
I won't be trying to do that any time soon.
There is a school of thought that says that vision can be improved by stretching the eye muscles. This is advocated by behavioral optometrists. The idea is that when you spend time focused at a certain distance, as so many of us do, our eye muscles tighten chronically. When this happens, the cornea and lens distort and vision problems arise. The problem is not helped in the long run by corrective lenses.
I believe some other behavioral optometrists have some other theories about "learning to see", etc.
I know this all sounds crazy, but my vision got worse every time I go in for a few months of really intensive coding. A few months ago, I was certain my prescription had gotten worse - I can usually tell because on top of not seeing distances clearly, I have headaches and feel sick a lot.
On a lark I bought a book (really, an ~80 page pamphlet) on eye exercises, and also a bigger one on behavioral optometry. I did the eye exercises they prescribed, and within a week or so I was seeing noticeably better.
Now, I believe behavioral optometrists would prescribe a regimen of steadily weaker corrective lenses, to exercise your eyes. I haven't gone that far yet, but I do have to say I was stunned by the marked improvement in my vision a few weeks of exercises got me. I've dealt with steadily worsening vision for the last 20 years, so I KNOW I am not imagining it.
http://surgicaleyes.com
i d=1618&highlight=lasik for more info on what I went thru.
Wish I'd found that site before I had my eyes fubared.
Short version...its been a year+..I'm spending over $50 a week on eye drops due to major dry eye issues....reading which used to be a pleasure in my life is now a nightmare....most importantly, due to the dryness and constant tiredness of my eyes, long term comp work is flat out. Also, caffine is majorly restricted due to how my eyes react to it... Nightvisions pure hell.
So..if contemplating it....do ALOT! of research...any doubts, dont do it.
See also : http://www.martialtalk.com/showthread.php?&thread
Good luck
A professor I work with, Brian Barsky, heads up the OPTICAL research project at UC Berkeley.
Their latest work, "RAYS (Render As You See) is a system for "vision-realistic rendering" which can simulate the vision of actual individuals. Vision-realistic rendering is particularly interesting in the context of laser refractive eye surgeries such as PRK and LASIK. Currently, almost a million Americans per year are choosing to undergo such elective surgeries. RAYS could convey to doctors the vision of a patient before and after surgery. In addition, RAYS could provide accurate and revealing visualizations of predicted acuity and simulated vision to potential candidates for such surgeries to facilitate educated decisions about the procedure. Still another application would be to show such candidates the possible visual anomalies that could arise from the surgery (such as glare at night)."
replace 'berserkeley' with 'berkeley' to respond via email.
I was like -4.00 and -3.75. I had Lasik a few years ago. Now I see about 20/25 and 20/20. I have the halos at night.
I have to admit, initially I was somewhat disappointed because my vision definitely wasn't as sharp as it was when it was fine-tuned with my contact lenses. But to tell you the truth, now I don't even think about it. My vision is definitely "good enough" and I'm glad I did it. Being free of any vision correction is really, really nice. The halos at night used to be somewhat annoying, but I've pretty much gotten used to them and they don't bother me.
One big advantage is that my eyes don't get as fatigued from wearing contact lenses at the end of the day, and I find that to be an advantage in late night programming sessions.
For me, the positives outweighed the negatives, but unfortunately there's no way to really know for yourself without doing it.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
I'm a programmer. I had my eyes done about 4 years ago. I've had no problmes. I did get a 'starburst' on bright lights at night but it is actually milder than the same effect when I wore glasses.
I had the procedure mainly because glasses interfered w/hunting and other outdoor sports.
From what I understand- the greater the correction needed, the greater the risks. My vision was not too bad prior to the procedure and better than 20/20 in both eyes after it was done.
I would do it again in a heart beat.
.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
18 months ago and have had better than 20/20 vision since.
my advice is to very carefully research your doctor and the equipment he uses. you get what you pay for, cheap prices usually means cheap service. much of the equipment they use can be looked up on the web (my doctor used a system developed by B&L, i could look up the stats and success & failure rate on B&L's web site as well as the FDA).
i'm very happy with having it done.
oh. i had it done at lasik plus.
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
The new method uses computer assisted distorted mirror and lens technology to create a real time map of the retina for the shaping beam (also new).
The benefits? Try 10/20 vision. And unlike LASIK, this new method promises less irritation and actually improves your night vision instead of nearly erasing it.
For my money, near super-human vision is worth the wait... and the estimated 5k per eye price tag.
About 8 months ago one of the local eye doctors started offering orthokeratology. I wanted to do this instead of lasik because I don't trust anything that has to do with cutting my eyes, the "oops, you know there is always a chance of something bad happening" factor bothers me. With orthokeratology, if you stop wearing the lenses, your eyes go back to how they were. This lets me have good vision with a minor inconvinience (less than wearing soft contacts) and give me the option of getting lasik when it is $50 an eye and there is no chance of anything bad happening.
My eyes started out at -6.5 / -5.5, which is at the far end for successful treatment. Important lesson, don't go from eyesight this bad to 20/20 in one step, use two different sets of lenses.
After about 6 weeks I had 20/20 20/25 without the lenses 20/15 with. Now I wear the lenses all day and night one day, leave them out the next. If I only wear them at night, after the second night I have 20/40.
I have no trouble working on computers all day, and I don't have to worry about losing a lens while rafting or diving. Getting dirt in my eye while biking though is a very interesting experience, one of the drawbacks of hard contact lenses.
I had mine done about a year and a half ago. I was 20/600 in both eyes. I'm now 20/20 in one eye and 20/15 in the other.
I have noticed some decrease in night vision but my night vision was worse with contacts, and without them I couldn't see anything anyway. I also can't read a page of fine print half an inch from my eye, no loss there, and the doctor says I may need bifocals a few years earlier than I otherwise would have. I can still read fine print at six inches, and the joy of not needing glasses or contacts to function cannot be described to someone who can see "normally".
That said, if you can function without glasses, and only need them for driving, say 20/40 or so, I wouldn't do it. For me it was worth doing even if I didn't get 20/20 out of it since even 20/50 would have been a vast improvement.
However, if you take one quote away from this post, it should be this: This isn't like buying toothpaste. This is surgery. You will get what you pay for.
In other words, do your homework before even talking to doctors. Be aware that this is surgery, even if it is outpatient surgery. I ended up paying much more than the "average" rate because the doctor I chose had done over 10,000 procedures (successfully), and was an instructor of the procedure. If you can afford it, the extra money for someone really experienced in the procedure is worth it.
I have a pretty strong prescription for nearsigtedness and astigmatism(at like a 30 degree angle, wich makes things even more fun)
I switched to contacts last year and my normal vision is much better, however my low light went to shit. I have rather large max-dialation, so the lens's correctiveness doesnt cover my pupil in low light conditions(and having a thick lens doesnt help either).
If this is any indication of what LASIK is like.. forget it... I still revert back to glasses when doing night photography or volunteer security patrol.
Anyone know if the LASIK halo problem stems from the same reason of the Contact Lens halo problem(over large pupil dialation)?
The other fact is that I (nor anyone else) knows what long-term effects these kind of treatments have.
I only have one pair of eyes. Glasses and contacts alleviate my sight problems adequately without doing something intrusive or irreversible. I'll stick with my glasses and contacts, thank you.
I basically sat in this chair and focused on a little red light. They put some numbing drops in my eyes and then lowered this eyeball sized tubish thing over my eye. It basically sucked onto and grabbed hold of my eye, then a blade comes out of that to slice a thin layer of the cornea. The surgeon then lifts up that layer and the world goes super foggy....
My brother had it done. He does not regret it, but he did say that the experience can be phychologically very uncomfortable. If you are the least bit squeamish about people playing with your eyeballs with scary tools and having your head and eyes locked into one position for a duration, then forget it.
They can't put you under anesthesa (sleeping gas) because you must keep your head and eyes still, and sleeping people tend to move both. Bummer.
Table-ized A.I.
I've been wearing CIBA Vision Focus Night and Day contacts for 2 years now. You can wear them for upto 30 days constantly. I've even been swimming in the sea and swimming pools with them; without goggles - hard to type goggles and not make it google ;-).
I believe they only just got approval in the US in the last 6 months or so. I live in California and asked my optomotrist about LASIK after having worn the CIBA lenses for about a year (I got my lenses from the UK and at that time had to order the next set my mailorder from the UK as well since they weren't approved in the US). This was the first time he had heard of the CIBA lenses and said that my eyes looked like they had never worn lenses and the risk of LASIK was considerably higher than wearing these lenses for the rest of my life.
Remeber LASIK is major surgery and as always there is a risk of it going wrong.
I'm not sure if the CIBA lenses can help with the astigmatism you mentioned but it is worth asking.
Agreed! Both my mother and brother have had LASIK done, and they loved it, but I'm not going to chance it. I'll stick to my Acuvue 2 contacts, thanks, even though I have to take them out nightly; I'm used to it. Besides, my eyes are pretty bad (-10.5 in one eye, -9.5 or -10 in the other, I forget which), and I don't think LASIK works on people whose eyes are that bad. Now, what I really need is the William Gibson solution...just pull out the old eyes and replace 'em with Zeiss Ikons. But we can't do that yet...
Be who you are...and be it in style!
I hope she turned out to be as good looking as you hoped. A low pass filter does wonders for a woman's beauty and having it removed like that can be a shock!
-- SIGFPE
your vision is practically perfect. My left eye is -8.50, and my right is -8.00. Plus I've got a stigatism in both eyes. I don't care if it takes me away from coding for a week or two, as soon as my vision stops getting worse I'm going in for LASIK. (it's gotten worse every checkup for 12 years now)
I'd be careful about wildly comparing everythings "danger factors" with driving at rush hour. Especially eye surgery. It is morbid, but chances are high that in a car accident you either won't really have to handle the results or get over it rather quickly. In eye surgery however, you're quite unlikely to die if the surgeon hits the "disintegrate" button, but you'll probably be blind as a mole for the rest of your life. Now, I would think that most of us are at an age where it would be very difficult at least to adopt to a completely changed lifestyle, especially if your defect was rather minor beforehand (nothing really requiring glass bricks).
I don't want to say that eye surgery is a bad thing. It has its merit in repairing defects that are otherwise incorrectible. But if it's (ab)used as purely cosmetic surgery, then I think the dangers outweigh the use.
Also note that my sight is rather good (-1.0 on both eyes, with a nasty embryonal core in the left which makes me see double on this eye), and so I might be unqualified to say this. But what I know is that every kind of surgery has very real dangers and that it should be regarded as a last resort.
Fight hunger. Filet a politician and send him to a 3rd world country of your choice.
Does anyone else find it ironic that the guy posing this question has the nick cyclops? If I were him, I would be very careful not to damage my lone good eye .)
Obviously you want good advice from a competent practitioner, and getting a second opinion is probably also a good idea. I'm sure the doctor can answer any questions relating to night vision concerns as well.
The question I would have is whether it has any impact on loss of depth perception. I've always thought if this process was reliable it would be good to get rid of the glasses, but now that I'm getting into the bifocal zone, I don't know that it would be as worthwhile. It would still be nice to only need reading glasses, but probably not if there was even a small risk of bad problems.
If your eyesight is not good enough to be a pilot or ATCO already then you won't be allowd to after laser surgery either.
I hear that is because UFO reports from pilots go up after having the surgery.
Table-ized A.I.
I'm not sure if you've already looked at the FDA's When is LASIK not for me? site but you'd better have a look at their suggested restrictions. Among them: your vision has not stabilzed yet and history of autoimmune diseases.
GMD
watch this
I was like -4.00 and -3.75.
Can someone explain what the numbers mean? Everyone seems to be saying their 2 numbers and my prescription has 6 numbers on the card...
He'll end up getting the high-tone, pimple-faced kid from the Simpsons.
"Uh-oh, Dr. Smith, I did it again."
Finally, math books without any of that base 6 crap in them.
US Department of Transportation: Title 14 of the Code of Federal Regulations (14 CFR)
Federal Aviation Regulations (FAR)
Subpart B - First-Class Airman Medical Certificate
67.103 Eye.
Eye standards for a first-class airman medical certificate are:
(a) Distant visual acuity of 20/20 or better in each eye separately, with or without corrective lenses. If corrective lenses (spectacles or contact lenses) are necessary for 20/20 vision, the person may be elegible only on the condition that corrective lenses are worn while excercising the privileges of an airman certificate.
(b) Near vision of 20/40 or better, Snellen equivalent, at 16 inches in each eye separately, with or without corrective lenses (&etc..)
(c) Ability to percieve those colors necessary for the safe performance of airman duties
(d) Normal fields of vision.
(e) No acute or chronic pathological condition of either eye or adnexa that interferes with the proper function of an eye, that may reasonably be expected to progress to that degree, or that may reasonably be expected to be aggravated by flying.
(f) Bifoveal fixation and vergence-phoria relationship sufficent to prevent a break in fusion under conditions that may reasonably be expected to occur in performing airman duties. Tests for the factors named in this paragraph are not required (&etc..)
-----
No mention in the entire FAR section, or in the Aeronautical Information Manual (AIM) about having had surgery in the past. If you pass the tests, then you can get your medical. If you get your medical, then you meet the qualifications.
If you are flying under a First Class medical certificate (Part 135 Regs) for an air-carrier, then you have to have your medical retested every 6 months anyway, so any degredation would hopefully disqualify you for a 1st class medical before it became dangerous.
A third class medical (for General Aviation flying, for instance) is even more forgiving that that.
If anyone knows of any documented reference against LASIK by the FAA, then let me know. I'd be interested to know where they keep undocumented medical rules like that. (Seriously.)
- PM
As several other posters have commented, there are some real risks to LASIK. They may be rare, and you can dramatically lower your risks by paying a few more bucks to go to the guy who handles the people messed up by cheaper places. Also, you can improve your odds by wearing glasses for a couple weeks longer than required during the pre-op period - let your eyes get back to their natural shape.
However, I made my decision based on the risks associated with not having the surgery. My vision was bad enough that glasses weren't really an option because of the weight. The pre-op period was a nightmare. Without glasses, I was legally blind and outside of known environments functionally blind.
When I looked at the big picture - the increased risk of injury or even death because of blindness without glasses, the fact that I was largely incapacitated if I was unable to wear contacts for some reason, etc., I went ahead with the surgery.
Overall, I'm fairly happy with the results. I'm starting to have some problems reading very fine print (e.g., doing 2-up code listings), but I'm sure that's related to the fact I'm over 40, not because of the surgery. (In fact, I still have unusually good close vision for my age.) I seem to have more floaters than before, but that may just be my imagination since exams show nothing unusual.
And as others have pointed out, my night vision has gone to hell. But it took me months to figure this out, since it's so hard to find darkness in an urban environment. When I'm driving, the lights from my car's headlights or even a full moon (e.g., during a recent night-time drive across Wyoming and Utah) is enough to keep my vision in the corrected region.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
On the plus side, surgery done properly DOES do a better job of correcting astigmatism than corrective lenses. If you are only astigmatic in one eye, consider having only that one eye done. RK 10 years after took my good eye and made it extremely farsighted and astigmatic, while it took my bad eye and fixed most of the astigmatism and made it only slightly farsighted. (Before RK both eyes were severly nearsighted.) If I had it to do over again, I'd only have one eye done.
One more thing: go to ALL your scheduled follow-up doctor visits!
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
As far as working on the computer, she wears her glasses, and she feels okay with it.
What it boils down to is: your mileage may vary. Bear in mind that you might not feel that you can get as good as your corrected vision back even with glasses, and that would be my concern if I was considering it. And if you're pushing 40, you're not going to be without glasses for long before presbyopia kicks in anyway.
Is this thing on? Hello?
ISBM
ISBN
"If he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies, he's sorely mistaken." Bush on bin Laden
My brother has the op done about 18 months ago, and he swears by it.
Initially, he would get flashes of light during the night (or when it was dark), but that went within a month or two.
Problem is, he keeps bugging me to get it done. But I predmoninatley use computers (wheras he is a DJ), and my vision is far worse (about -5.0 in both eyes, plus astigmatism)... not only that but my level of shortsightedness is still getting worse and hasn't leveled off.
Plus, when you get to your 40's don't your eyes start becoming more long sighted?
If it wasn't for the astigmatism, then I could use contacts on a more regular basis. Because I have to use toric lenses, there is less oxygen getting to the eyes... so there goes being able to use the 1 month lenses which you don't have to take out. And the availability of coloured toric isn't as popular (and mucho expensive).
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
Beyond that, if you are nearsighted and don't suffer from stress-related vision problems, there is no way to "improve" your eyesight through eye exercises; eyes just aren't built that way. Most likely, the "improvements" you are seeing are the onset of presbyopia. Moving monitors further and further away is a common way of dealing with it. Most people get reading glasses when they reach the limits of their desk--it's more convenient. And, no, there is nothing to be done about presbyopia--everybody gets it sooner or later. Some people are just more willing to tolerate inconveniences for vanity--that's the only reason you don't see everybody over 50 running around with reading glasses.
I've seen a ton of people asking about/posting
y .htm
h tml
about the See Clearly Method. It borders on
complete fraud. Here is some information
derived from a quick google search.
First, from their own disclaimer on their own
page:
"The See Clearly Method (tm) is an educational tool that teaches the user how to see more clearly, comfortably, and efficiently. It is not a medical or assistive device, nor is it a substitute for diagnosis or treatment by an optometrist or ophthalmologist."
This from http://www.allaboutvision.com/buysmart/see_clearl
"The instruction manual recommends personal affirmations to help you along. You might remind yourself, for example, "I am seeing better each day." If you're having any doubts, you might declare, "I can see without my glasses." For a vaguer standard of success, you could simply say, "I feel positive changes in my vision taking place.""
This from: http://www.fhradio.org/fm/archives/2003/2610(FM).
"The plain truth is that there is no scientific evidence that the "See Clearly Method" can actually improve your eyesight. Dr. Michael Earley, chief of the Binocular Vision Clinic at Ohio State University, has studied the "See Clearly Method" extensively. This professor of optometry -- from our sister institution in Columbus -- didn't mince words when he told a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporter last December about his conversation with a "See Clearly" representative: "Everything the . . . representative said was absolutely wrong. He gave me facts on the eye muscle pulling on the lens and that is absolutely backward. He was absolutely anatomically and physiologically wrong on everything he said.""
The long and the short of it is, they have paid
a considerable amount of money to have in house
testing done that says it works. Dubious sources,
no doubt paid by them, talk about how great it is.
The rest of the Opthamological world thinks they
are snake oil salesmen. You can find a ton of
people in news groups complaining that it does
not work, and they had trouble getting their
money back. I'm wondering if they'll have any
legal liability the first time someone is
driving and chanting "I feel positive changes
in my vision taking place" when they run
someone's kid over. I hope this helps.
The most important thing any republican needs to know.
In any event, the main difference between PRK and Lasik is that with PRK they don't slice your eyeball. No mechanical blade is used at all, it is entirely done by the Excemer laser.
This can prevent many of the nightmares associated with LASIK and long-term damage to the eye. Though I cannot speak for everyone, I personally have extremely good night vision with no flaring of lights at all. Additionally it was able to correct 4 diopter myopia to better than 20/20. My vision is actually closer to 20/10.
Not bad for someone who previous to the surgery couldn't read the dashboard of a car while sitting in the drivers seat without glasses!
Of course that is just my opinion, YMMV.
If anyone is interested in the surgery and lives in the Ottawa area I would recommend Dr. Denis Conrad - fantastic surgeon!
Laser MedCare (LMC)
o Dr. Dennis R. Conrad, M.D., F.R.C.S.(C.)
o 2430-6, Bank Street
o Ottawa (Ontario)
"They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
I had LASIK performed in June. It was like magic. You wake up the next morning and you can see perfectly. I had 20/20 vision in my left eye and 20/25 in the right the next day.
The surgery only takes about 20 minutes. I was a little disconcerted to get a whiff of vaporizing eye balls. I would say burning but my surgeon corrected me saying that they were actually vaporizing. They are very particular about their language. They have a little shop vac thing to suck up the smoke but it obviously didn't get it all.
I am now 20/15 in the left and 20/20 in the right. I have not had any problems and the flaps have healed to the point where my optometrist says that another doctor who did not know I had the surgery would probably not notice it.
I actually find that coding and reading are easier than before. I used to have a problem with headaches after long sessions in front of the computer. That has pretty much gone away. The laser corrects your vision more precisely than off-the-shelf lenses ever could.
They have refined the flap cutting techniques to minimize the halo effect that so many people complain about. I find that I only have trouble when my eyes are dry. Eye drops take care of that.
I chose my surgeon pretty carefully. He has performed over 7000 corrective surgeries since '95. His first patient does not need glasses to this day. He has trained many doctors to do the surgery and also does a lot of research in the area. He is a really sharp guy with a lot of practical experience.
I think that most complications from the surgery arise from the cutting of the flap. This seems to be the place where an experienced surgeon makes the biggest difference. I paid top dollar for the most experienced and qualified doctor that I could find.
In the end you just have to make the decision. I have been wearing contacts for over 20 years. That takes its toll on your eyes. I was starting to get some vascular growth in my cornea caused by such long contact use. My vision used to be so poor that even the newer lightweight lenses my glasses would leave dents in my nose after a few days of wearing them. I had to wear my glasses for a few weeks prior to the LASIK surgery and I thought that I was going to go nuts. I'm pretty active. I run, work out, surf, jet ski, etc. Glasses and contacts have always been a pain. LASIK has literally changed my life in that respect.
I saw that some people suggested getting one eye done at a time. Realize that you will have to wear your glasses with one lens between surgeries. I went ahead and had both done. Most people do. The probability of both of your eyes falling out is relatively small.
I would do it again in a second.
Yeah, it's emotionally kind of appealing to be "independent" of a piece of metal and plastic, but rationally, there is very little reason to. I wouldn't risk my eyesight on a procedure with no known long-term safety record.
But I came out of the surgery being able to drive without glasses the next day, and with a perfect 0/0 correction left eye (seeing 20/10: better than my eye doc with his glasses) and about -0.7 nearsightedness in the right eye: a perfect bifocal, important since I hit 40 this year.
Would I do it again? Absolutely. Will you get the same results? Only your doctor can tell (or maybe guess).
The main thing was after 10 years of glasses and 20 years of contacts, I wake up in the morning and can see the individual leaves in the tree outside my window. And instead of the once-a-day horror when some crap would get behind my lens, I have about a once a month piece of junk in my eye. Absolutely worth the trade.
I do not notice any night loss. Perhaps that's because my doc used the machine that makes an extremely wide cut... I know that some of the "cut-rate" docs have simpler machines. That was an initial concern of my eyedoc, which is why he hesitated recommending me. But my night vision is amazing, and I confuse my students when I can read their monitor text from 6 or 7 feet away.
My eyes are just as good today. Actually, I haven't even gone in for an eye exam for two years, because they're just working! It's truly a miracle.
So my guess is the description of the work they are doing is accurate, and there probably is some kind of consistent damage patterns with LASIK, though some people may never notice them.
My aunt and uncle both had LASIK and they have complained about the halos at night and generally poor night vision that has resulted. Also the results aren't always perfect 20/20 in both eyes when things heal.
Apart from the question of risks and benefits to your vision in the short-term, there is also the question of how well Lasik holds up over the long term. You might ask your surgeon what he or she knows about the incidence of complications or degradation of vision ten or twenty years down the road?
For elective surgery like this, I would wait until there was at least a good statistical base of 30-40-year postoperative outcomes before I would be comfortable with the idea that I had even a clue about the risks involved. In other words, I will not consider this procedure for myself, but my children may be able to make informed decisions when they grow up.
Check in to a procedure called intacs. It's for nearsighted people only. What they do is slip a transparent ring into your cornea to deform it into the right shape. It is supposed to be easily removable (not 100% reversable, since few surgeries are that) and it won't blind you in a worse case scenario.
They are more expensive though.
The problem is that the myopia surgery goes only on one part inside of the eye pupil. they make a circle inside the pupil so as part of it sees well, and the other part, that stays outside the perimeter of this circle remains 'blind'. :)
during the day, when the pupil closes, you see very well. but at night, when it opens to gain light, you may have some problems, because part of your eye would see well, and the other part won't.
this things they don't talk about. so as if you have like 5 of myopia, u WILL feel strange. if u had like 2 or 3 of myopia u'd feel less the difference.
sorry 4 my bad english
If you wear contact lenses, there is a small chance you may permanently screw up your eyesight due to a scratched and/or infected cornea. The risks of serious negative outcome associated with LASIK are smaller than the normal risks associated with contact lenses, so people who wear contacts now are probably on net helping their odds of keeping decent eyesight if they get LASIK.
Me? I got LASIK a few years ago. Best $4400 I ever spent. The main caveat I might add is that for a computer geek sometime it sucks to have "normal" vision. Back when I was nearsighted it was possible for me to read ultra-fine print. I could print program listings 8 or 16 pages to one side of a laser-printed page and still read it. I could squint a bit and easily make out individual pixels on my Newton or CRT monitor - often useful when doing graphic work.
Now, my vision is just normal. Meaning I no longer need glasses to read stuff 20 feet away, but the flip side is I can't take them off to read stuff 2 inches away. Sometimes I miss that ability.
I play Nerd-Folk!
Not without complications. They'd still do it again because their sight was really bad to begin with but it's enough to put me off.
Three words: Tear duct plugs.
If you think looking for your glasses is a pain, just wait until you start losing those little guys.
Like yourself, I'm a developer who's been myopic (-3.0) for about half my life and wanted to do something about it. I was looking at LASIK and PRK, and was very close to doing it, when I found this site: http://www.surgicaleyes.com. I recommend you read some of the stories there and think again, carefully, very carefully, before you go ahead.
What I did was post there and ask if there were any known alternatives, and lo and behold, a person recommended a method called Ortho-K (http://www.ortho-k.net), which I've happily gone with instead. Basically it means that I wear contacts during the night and have perfect vision during the course of the day. And it's fully reversible, and can be adjusted as your eyes change with age (try and do the same with LASIK!). The fact that my optometrist offered either that I'd be fully satisfied with the outcome, or a full refund didn't make things worse, exactly. I'm very happy, and I've been using this for about a month now.
My vision is easily 20/20 these days, but I've learned that that doesn't necessarily mean that I have a good quality vision. I have had days when I have had a fair bit of ghosting, and in poor lighting I experience too significant starbursts. I have just had small modifications made to my lenses to compensate for this, and my optometrist is quite optimistic about improving this considerably.
Now that I've had the chance to "toy around" with my vision and have seen some of the effects that can result from it, there is no way in hell that I'd use something as permanent as LASIK, with little or no way of adjusting after the deed is done. The prospect of coding in braille is not one I'd look favorably upon.
I'm going next week for my first appointment about getting this done. I know 4 or 5 people that have already had it done and they tell me to go do it RIGHT NOW.
A little tip my HR person told me.... Set up your flexible spending account to get the surgery next year. I plan to get mine done in January. This way the money you use for the surgery is pre-tax! Plus, the money gets taken out of your check throughout the year. You get the surgery done with pre-tax money "financed" throughout the year with no interest. Sounds great to me.
You can't do exactly that yet, but you can pull out your old lenses and replace 'em with ones that focus at the right place if you really want to. Check out lens implants... it's pretty much cataract surgery, except without the cataracts :)
before you jump into eye surgery, visit the ones on "the other side" who fell through the cracks:
http://www.surgicaleyes.org
If you already use "hard" contact lenses(aka Rigid Gas Permeable) then ignore this post. I bring this up because "contacts" for many people means "soft contacts." In fact, recently when I was cleaning my hard contacts here at work someone said "I didn't know they still made those." If you have only used the allegedly comfortable soft contacts, you should know more about the other contacts. Disclaimer: IANAO (I Am Not An Optometrist)
Soft Contacts are a very fine mesh that holds your tears into a properly shaped lens. So if you don't blink enough, or have dry eyes, they don't work very well. So they are very poor for watching a movie or staring at a computer screen. They are great for sports or other active pursuits, because you blink more during those, and the larger soft contacts stay put on the front of your eye better than hard contacts. Soft contacts are also safer if you happen to take a poke in the eye. So they are great for basketball, bad for coding.
Hard contacts form a much smoother front lens, so they pretty much always give better vision than either glasses or soft contacts. I get better than 20/15 from my hard contacts while just managing 20/20 from glasses or soft contacts. Hard contacts are not so dependant on moisture so they are just fine for staring at a computer screen, which is what I do for 8-14 hours a day. Hard contacts also tend to hold your eye in shape and prevent your vision from getting worse. Hard contacts are also the cheapest choice, because they last much longer than soft contacts. The drawback of hard lenses is that your eyelid can catch the edge of the lens, especially if your eyes are dry or if you are doing something active, and flip the contact out of your eye or de-center it. And by de-center I mean push it off your iris and onto the white of your eye, which is rather uncomfortable. Which brings up the main reason few people wear hard contact lenses: comfort. They take some getting used to. Some people give up after a day or two because their eyes hurt. But if you don't give up, your eye de-sensitizes. At first, if your contact de-centers, it makes you want to claw your eyes out, but after a time, one feels no pain, and can just push the contact back into place with their finger, without the aid of a mirror.
Its true that I can't see past the end of the bed when I wake up in the morning, and I have to clean my contacts every night, but I don't think that it is cumbersome. I might get eye surgery/replacement in 15 or 20 years when they can guarantee me 20/15 vision without loss of night vision, but for now I'll stick with hard lenses most of the time, and soft lenses for sports. I think it is that loss of night vision part that scares me the most.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
I've been wondering whether I should fork out the money for this one. Looks like an interesting alternative. The irritating thing is that there's no guarantee that it works, but then again, no product out there has one anyway.
You might want to check out this article too.
Anyway I'll be checking this one out.. if you're gonna get this, let me know too. Perhaps we can exchange some information about it.
I've got the same brand and I love them, i put them in at the beginning of the month and practically forget about them till the end of the month.
Learning how to shower w/ contacts on was a bit interesting but other than that, they've been great.
But my brain did supply sound effects. That was disturbing. It went "*SCHLURP*... *POIK*...EEEEZzzztZzztZzttt *ZAPPO* *ZAPPO* *ZAPPO* *SCHLURP* *RRR-RRR0RR*" Really... really disturbing...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Very true. Perhaps I should have clarified that my vision is terrible - ~3.75 and ~4.75 - and has slowly been getting worse all my life. In my case, the odds of coming out worse in the long run are fairly small. For someone with reasonable vision, no, gains from the surgery would not be worth the risk.
That's not the right way to think about it. Right now, you can see. Well enough to read and type on the computer, apparently. Yes, you need glasses or contacts, but you can.
So the chances of LASIK making you blind are the same as someone who didn't need glasses to see but had the surgery anyway (not that I know why someone would do that). If you go blind, it doesn't matter that you couldn't see all that great before without your glasses; it's still going to suck.
-Ted
-=-=- Quantum physics - the dreams stuff are made of.
I was interested in this subject as you have been and these are the methods that I know about.
:P
* Radial Keratotomy
NEVERY DO THIS. It's a small disaster. they use diamond cutters to carve into your eye so it bulges out and changes the shape of your cornea.
At first this works, but because the different scars heal in unpredictable ways, it completely messes up the shape of your eyes after a longer period. You can never wear contacts again and glasses won't help because you vision is distorted, not near- or farsighted.
* Laser surgery/LASIK
This seems to work well, but some people have had problems with it.
The main problem I've read about (on Slashdot) is that the laser has an disc-like area it treats, and an area it doesn't treat and there is a sharp border between the two.
It vaporises away the treated area leaving a ridge at the start of the untreated area.
The ridge will stay with some people and act like a lense, giving them haloes around light sources at night (and during the day, but you can't see them then).
One other note for Laser surgery. They need to vaporise the cornea and for that, they need to remove the "skin" of the eye first. They used to just scratch it away with a spoon-like thing and give you eye-drops till it healed, but nowadays a newer technique is said to give better result. They cut 3 sides of a square shape and fold away a flap of your "eye skin", do the surgery, then fold the flap back like it was. Ask about the newer technique.
* "Plastic" rings
Don't know the name of the procedure, but it involves changing the shape of the cornea to correct your vision by inserting pieces of "plastic" in the upper tissue layer of the eye. The insertions are shaped like a wheel cut in half.
This bulges the parts of your cornea at the edges, thereby making the outer lens of your eye a flatter shape. Thus curing your near-sightedness.
The inserts are very thin and therefore only need tiny cuts to be inserted. They can be removed or replaced if needed. Seems to be a limit to the amount of near-sightedness they can correct.
*Insertion of internal lens
Don't know the name of this procedure either but it has it's history in the treatment of patients who's internal lens had been clouded by cataracts or other diseases. The diseased internal lens would be removed in these patients and replaced by an articicial lens held in place by two rounded "arms" attached to the lens acting like springs that radiate outward and hold the lens in place. The arms look like a bit like the bottom 3/4 of the letter J.
The technique to cure near-sightedness is to do the same procedure, but to leave the original internal lense where it is. The artificial lens will sit between the cornea and the internal lens (I think there's a natural "canyon" where the arms will press into that is between those 2).
The cut needs to be big enough for a folded lens to fit into but it is made at the edge of the iris so it should not be visible. Don't know if you can wear contact lenses over the scar but the implant can be removed or replaced if needed.
I myself am planning to have the last procedure perfomed when I have the money because it seems to me to give more control over the correction than the "half wheel inserts" approach. I still have to ask if they can rotate the artificial lense in such a way to cure my other sight deviation (cylinder/astimagtism?) but if not, then that's no big problem at all.
I also wonder if it's possible or wise to have the artificial internal lense block UV rays. This would prevent damage and cataracts to my eyes by sunlight and I would never become snowblind
Are there chemically stable transparent UV blockers?
- -- Truth addict for life.
I had -2.5 nearsightedness in both eyes and decided to go looking for the best vision correction solution I could find. I considered RK and LASIK but was a bit concerned that there was no long-term data on either procedure. At the time Intacts (intra-corneal stomal rings, I think) had just getting FDA approval and UCSF was one of the eye centers that performed the procedure. The big win for Intacts was that the procedure was reversible, they put a couple of half-rings into the cornea to re-shape things and if necessary they can yank them back out again...
Post-Intacts I am 20/15 in both eyes and have had no problems after three years.
Definitely not ANYTHING connected with Scientology. Interestingly, I knew a man who was L. Ron Hubbard's roommate in the '40s. Back then, he talked about starting a religion.
To do it right, you must be VERY committed. Working the muscles with chronic muscle tension will bring up feelings of the conflicts that put the tension there.
Essentially, with ortho-k you wear hard contacts while you sleep. These contacts are engineered in such a way that they reshape your cornia to adjust for myopia or astigmatism. I also depend on staring at a monitor both during my job and when I get home (as a hobby). My vision has changed from a -3.5 lens to about +0.25. (The slight far-sightedness is actually a good thing.)
One of the advantages (or perhaps disadvantages depending on your perspective) is that ortho-k is not permanent. As a result, it's less risky. If you stop wearing the contact lenses, your eyes will slowly revert (however probably never as bad as they were when you started).
I've been using ortho-k for over a year now and I love it. I don't have to worry about dry eyes from contacts (since when I do wear the contacts I am sleeping, so I don't feel them) nor do I have to deal with the inconveniences of glasses. Plus I don't have to undergo the scary LASIK surgery. The risks and the costs are much less with ortho-k. I highly recommend it.
Jason.
Ok, I had the surgery, and I am in the unique position to do an A/B comparison of a corrected eye and an uncorrected eye. I had one eye done at a time, and after much frustration, decided not to get the second eye done.
I would NOT recommend it.
I was signed up for a the LASIK procedure, but at the last minute, they told me my corneal depth wasn't enough for LASIK. I was offered another newer surgery called LASEK which was supposed to be much better: no cutting of the cornea but the same laser accuracy. They put alcohol on your eye and loosen and fold back the epithelial layer covering the cornea. Then they etch your cornea with the laser and fold it back. It supposedly has a shorter healing time, less trauma from the cutting and doesn't have the "fallen circus tent effect". This happens when the LASIK corneal flap re-covers the cornea and gets little micro-striations from settling down on a flatter surface.
So, I had the left eye done, and continued to wear a soft contact lens in the right eye.
They say I have 20/20 vision in my left eye. My right eye with the contact lens does about 20/15.
My left eye is probably 20/20 in bright bright daylight. However, the darker it gets, the worse my vision becomes.
I believe what has happened is that the brighter the light is, the smaller your pupil closes down. With the pupil closed, only a small portion of your cornea is used to bring light into the eye and irregularities in the surface don't make much difference.
However, when the pupil opens up, you need a much more precise curve in your cornea to properly focus the light on your retina. I think that not only is the curve of my cornea imprecise, when my pupil opens some light comes through the portion of my eye not corrected by the laser. (And I had the "large pupil program")
At night, my left eye shows a confusing view of lights. Headlights from cars have a certain percentage focused at a point, but a large portion comes out in a halo (seems to be more to one side for me). Signs are quite difficult to read until I'm right up on them. If I didn't have my right eye to help, I would not trust myself to drive at night.
Movie theaters are another bother. You go in a theater and as soon as things get dim, the screen washes out for one eye.
My right eye is corrected by a soft Toric contact lens. It does significantly better in almost every case. Although it is nice to get up in the morning with SOME vision from the left eye, I have to put in my contact lens to get really crisp clear vision.
I can't sit at the computer screen in a dark room easily. It helps to have a bright light near the computer screen. This closes down the pupil and I get crisper vision in the left eye.
If I could do it again, I would definitely stick to my contacts.
My doctor seemed bothered that I was upset. He kept on trying to get me to compare the eye with the surgery to the same eye without any vision correction. Yeah, maybe things are better for the 5 minutes I need to put my lenses in in the morning, but really, is that meaningful?
I believe your vision will get worse than corrected vision, especially at night. Oh yeah, I can't wear glasses anymore because they change the size of the image that I see and though the brain can adjust for minor offsets in vision, it can't deal with two differently sized images.
and get a laser with *pupil tracking*. It is worth it. I went from -6 to perfect in a single session, but the extra money you pay for a quality laser that can move with your eye if you twitch.
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
This stuff may be good for the daytime, when your pupils are dialated small, and you are looking through the tiny center of your eyes lens.
However, as an amateur astronomer, I have read many times about what this surgery means for night vision, when your pupils dialate wide and you use a significant portion of your lens.
The general concensus? It destroys night time vision accuracy. The surgeons cant correct very well for "off axis" aberrations and astigmatisms. People report lots of flare coming off lights at night, and generally, worse vision as your eyes become accomodated to the dark.
There is no question these techniques are getting better, but if someone opts for year 2002 technology, I think they might be ruining some stuff they may or may not be aware of.
I had LASIK done in April of 2001 (almost 18 months ago).
... I was never able to wear contacts because these blue eyes are just too sensitive. My first day after surgery I had to keep fairly sedated because my eyes itched/hurt, so of course my instinct was to try and open or rub them.
... I tend to see 1 strong yellow line and 2 converging "ghosted" yellow lines when looking at the road).
:) ...
I was fairly nearsighted and also mildly astigmatic, both eyes were almost equal.
Anyway
After the first day I could open my eyes and see. After the 3rd day I didn't have any measurable irritation. By the 7th day my vision was better than 20/20 except for the normal halo patterns.
However, after about 3-4 months my vision got a little worse. I'm not quite 20/20 in either eye. My right eye is better (but I'm left-eye dominant, so it's frustrating). My left eye is able to pass the Colorado driver's exam, but just barely.
My biggest problem is "ghosting" as I call it. I think it's just the healed version of the halos that I had bad at first. It is only a problem in very bright light or in high-contrast images (like driving at night
The ghosting is enough to give me a mild eye-strain headache every once in a great while, but usually it just makes me squint a bit. I have no problems working on a computer monitor for 10+ hours a day and I don't have any problems reading in bed (I had gotten so nearsighted that I had to wear my glasses to read at night).
My eyes have been stable since about 6 months after the surgery. My cost was $1500/eye, but it was at a well known clinic and they give as many free tune-ups as required for 3 years after the procedure. I would have gotten a tune-up by now, but I've moved.
I'm waiting for our vacation back to the place where it was done (Dr. Arrowsmith in Nashville, TN) this winter to get my tune-up. That will give me 14 months left on the policy to heal and see how things go. I doubt I will go for more than 1 tune-up though, as I am worried about causing scarring.
The best part is, I went in to get a tuneup in June and the doctor actually told me to wait because they were getting in a new machine (Wave laser) that was much more accurate. Apparently my nearsightedness is gone and the ghosting (which is exacerbated by my having had astigmatism) is a result of a barely uneven surface from the old laser. The new laser handles this much better. I like a doctor who will tell you that instead of just trying to clear their schedule.
Overall I'm very happy I did it. I never liked my glasses and am very happy that I can read at night. Plus, now I can buy ski goggles and motorcycle helmets that are comfortable
Recommendations:
1) I had both eyes done at the same time. DON'T DO THAT. While I turned out ok, if my eyes had healed any less "ok" than they are I would be upset that I did them both. I would recommend doing 1, waiting 2-3 months, then doing the other if you're satisfied.
2) If you get a free tune-up, especially if it's valid for a couple of years like most reputable clinics are wont to do, wait at least 6 months, maybe 12, before having a tune-up. Not only will your eyes continue to heal the first few months, but more refined technology is continuously being rolled out.
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
I had LASIK done in May 2000, and aside from some dryness for a few months after it couldn't have gone better.
I was -1.25 diopters in both eyes, astigmatic, I'm 20/15 in both eyes now, even after two years.
My ex-gf had it done at the same time, she was -3.25 in both eyes and corrected to 20/20. Her vision is still "perfect".
I had mine done in Canada, because (1) it was cheaper at the time, and (2) they were using a scanning spot laster which the FDA hadn't approved. It makes a much larger incision, and has less haloing (mine went away within 6 weeks). Make sure if you have large pupils that the laser they are using will make a large enough incision to lower haloing.
Expect the procedure to take a few minutes, mine took 10. They position your head, the laser makes an incision, a cup comes down and sucks the flap up, a laser makes the correction, then the doctor uses a brush with special glue to put your cornea back in place. No hands are going to touch your eyes, no scapals will get near you. It sounds worse than it is. Don't worry about sneazing, the laser will stop. Don't worry about fucking up your eye exam, they do a bunch. I paid a whole lot of attention during those eye exams.
My only problem is that the muscles in my right eye are noticably weaker than the ones in my left. Glasses corrected for this, so my eyes didn't get as tired as they do now, but in effect it's because I look at the computer screen for too long.
One big note: make sure you use natural tears and not something like Visine. Don't ask why, just pay more.
Get out you wallet, you won't be sorry. Good luck
"All I ever wanted was to see Larry Wall give Bill Gates a Perl necklace."
http://www.eisenschmidt.org/jweisen
Have there been any long term studies on this type of surgery? I don't think there have. You don't want to have a surgery which is great for 5-10 years, and then, I don't know, your eyes self destruct or melt or whatever. Might want to find some people who have had this for a long time.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Lots of people posted in a previous Ask Slashdot that if you use a computer, PRIO vision could be for you.
From the FAQ:
"It's a new technology, and a method for testing and prescribing occupational glasses for patients who have symptoms of eyestrain when working at a computer."
"TK-421, why aren't you at your post?"
The bottom line is that they are removing part of the lens. You will see worse after you get correcction. However, the bad place is moved from when you need to see to where you don't normamly need to see, with a bigger bad area. Note that the loss is generally very small, but it is there.
Most people who have this surgery agree that the cost is worth it, they don't even notice the loss. I have decided that I won't take the risk, but that doesn't mean I've made the right decision. I hate glasses (I couldn't wear contacts, but that was 10 years ago, things have changed I'm sure), but loss of vision is not something I could stand.
...since I am posting late.. but
:P) if I couldn't get someone to tell me if I was above or below.
(haha, pun originally not intended, but it is now)....
Find someone who will turn you away!
One of the big things about this surgery is that, most (all?) Dr's will tell you the average risk. But they will not tell you your specific risk. For people with certain eye characteristics, the rate for having complications is much higher than others. I'd have serious reservations (if I couldn't see 20/20 already
In fact, I'd be willing to pay a fair some of money to a doctor to evaluate me who KNEW he wouldn't be getting me as a patient. Second opinion is one thing. Objective opinion is another.
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
Three years ago I managed to get into FDA phase 3 trials for Staar Surgical's implantable contact lens (ICL). The lens is already widely used in other countries. The results have been good. I was extraordinarly near-sighted (-17 D), so LASIK as not a good option. I now see 20/30, owing to some residual astigmatism the lens is not designed to correct. I wear some very light, thin glasses when I want things to be crisp, like night driving. There are a number of implantables in trials right now. They have the advantage of being reversible and the optics are more precise because you are not dealing with tissue.
I'll wait for the Zeiss Ikons, thanks. :-)
Be who you are...and be it in style!
With my left eye, I have very fine "microscope" vision. I can get very close to something, like a monitor, and easily make out very fine details, like individual pixels on a very high resolution display. While I can sort of do this with my right eye, I cannot get as close to things without loosing focus, and while I can still make out 90% of the detail I can make out with my left eye, it's an order of magnitude more difficult. It's also very hard to explain without the unique perspective that I have. The best way I can describe it is to imagine wearing a very low power microscope on one eye -- you can see great detail, but you lose a bit of distance vision in the process.
All that said, I'm thinking seriously of Lasik. My wife had it done on both eyes, and she's never had one complaint about the procedure. I can't wear glasses because of the extreme differences between the prescriptions for each eye, and I have never done well with contacts. I figure my risk is much less than normal, because it's only one eye, and if I have a less than perfect result, my brain is already used to ignoring most of the faulty data from that eye anyway (I see 20/20 using both eyes). While I enjoy my microscope vision, it seriously interferes with my depth perception, and I find myself wanting good depth perception more than I want super-detailed vision.
My advice to those seeking Lasik, is to definately shop around, and get several recommendations. Take the time to find a competent doctor, and don't cheapen out on the cost of the surgery. The doctor who did my wife's surgery owned his own machine (many are simply rented and shared among many doctors), and never reused blades. He'd also been performing Lasik since it was an experimental surgery, and was very honest about the risks, bad experiences, and eligibility. It was quite a bit more expensive than anywhere else in town, and even the preliminary exam wasn't free -- but in retrospect, it was worth every penny.
-------------------------------------------------
A: This is not OT.
B:I chose to comment at this level because you're talking about my prescription, or close to it - 10.0 and 10.5 nearsighted, with a couple of diopters of astigmatism.... at least, it was. It was a scary decision, but i figured the chances of permanent crippling vision damage was miniscule, and the chance of some degradation was still pretty small. I figured i could wear even worse coke-bottle-bottoms, switch to a larger font, and maybe squint a bit, maybe even use a screen reader, for my job. On a mountainside, glasses can be a real hassle. Fogging in the cold, sliding down your nose in the heat, and, the possibility of them falling off and leaving me hoping for a high-altitude rescue (contacts are even worse when you're that far out on your own) made me take the chance.
I had to go with PRK, as my cornea is only about as thick as the flap they cut for LASIK. During my post-procedure phase, I accidentally took the cortisone drops a few days too long, and ended up making myself slightly farsighted. I'm only 39, so i've still got good focal range, and can focus down to about 8 inches, but I'm going to need reading glasses sooner than I should have. I still don't regret it. I'm a solid 20:15, and can jump out of bed in the middle of the night seeing perfectly.
Note that if you're much past 10, nobody will do you, so it can't get rid of 2-inch-thick lenses. What it comes down to is your own priorities, what losses you can live with, what risks you can stomach. If you're a couch potato, barfly, gamer, or otherwise sedentary, vision correcting surgery is probably a waste of time, stress, money, and karma. For me, not a day passes where I don't think about it and giggle about the fact that I'm no longer a cripple when I sleep.
Do a google search for these keywords: see clearly method
t m
That will bring up lots of info, starting with a company which sells a whole videotape, book, cassette, ec package which you may or may not want or need.
Also you might want to check out CRT and Ortho-K - contacts you sleep in which reshape your eyes.
http://www.allaboutvision.com/contacts/orthok.h
Considering the risks I would not recommend surgery to anyone who needs to read small text for their livelihood. If your glasses are getting you down, get some cooler frames and leave the lasers to those who have a lifestyle which can handle the side-effects or a botched job, e.g. those who don't spend hours coding, hours on end reading, etc.
I cannot recommend more highly this doctor. He just started his own practiceafter working with Vanderbilt for a while.
Ming Wang, M.D., Ph.D. in Nashville, TN
This guy is one of the best in the world, and when you have someone working on your eyes that's what you want.... Not some quack in a strip mall. It will cost you more, but it is completely worth it. I know people who have had bad eye surgery and people who have had it done right... This guy does it right... Working on the eyes of 800 physicians should really make that point... Check out his credentials:
From his web site: drmingwang.com
* Has successfully performed over 8,000 consecutive LASIK procedures; * Was named as a "VISX Star Surgeon" for having a LASIK surgical volume ranked in the top 5% nationally; * Over 800 physicians have entrusted their own eyes to Dr. Wang for LASIK surgery since 1997.
* M.D. (magna cum laude) Harvard Medical School and MIT; * Ph.D. in laser physics, atomic spectroscopy; * Residency (Wills Eye Hospital); * Cornea/refractive surgery fellowship (Bascom Palmer Eye Institute); * One of the very few LASIK surgeons in the world who has both ophthalmology training and in lasers(Ph.D).
i had lasik eye surgery several months ago, and now I can dee great no com-plaints hereQ
The foei;s uea;;y like it@
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
I've been toying with getting LASIK done as well, but I'm worried because my myopia is -9.75 and -9.25 on R/L eyes respectively. Has anyone had experience with this kind of thing, or heard of someone who has?
Ceci n'est pas une sig
The safest choice is wearing glasses--actually safer than having "perfect eyesight" since glasses give you constant UV and physical protection. If you occasionally wear disposable contacts, your risk of infection is still negligible and you get the convenience of contacts when needed.
Then again, that might have to do with older contact lenses when the technology wasn't as good.
I used to have soft contact lenses from about 14 to 23. I finally got LASIK in January 2001 because I was starting to have trouble with contact lenses. The problem wasn't actually, in my case, with scratching, but rather with not letting enough oxygen reach the surface of my eyes.
LASIK works well for me. I don't think I would've been able to wear contacts for too much more time, and glasses are pretty inconvenient for some things that I do.
That doesn't mean that it works for everybody, or that when it works badly it doesn't really really suck, or that the failure rates are 10%, 1%, or 0.1%. Perhaps the statistics are skewed, either because people who have trouble with it don't think reading Slashdot is worth the eyestrain, or because computer people are more likely to have eye trouble than and lots of disposable income than retail clerks, so they're more likely to get the surgery done and rave about it here.
Disclaimer: My eyes are still running on original equipment, though I've had several friends who've really liked it, among a small enough sample set that the lack of bad experiences doesn't mean that the failure rate couldn't be as bad as 10%. I'm now at the age where my parents were regularly using reading glasses, and I don't find them helpful, much less necessary, so I guess I'm lucky here.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I realize not every experience is the same, but I had LASIK performed about 2 years ago and it's been great. I had miserable vision (don't have prescription before LASIK handy) and when I went back for a checkup one week later I was 20/15. I could tell on the ride home that it had worked as I was able to read license plates and such that I could never see before.
I do experience the halos that some people describe during nighttime driving. It's a little bit of flare around bright sources of light on a dark background but as stupid as it sounds I can't remember if this is how I was before the surgery. Even if I wasn't, it's worth it for me. I do a hell of a lot less nighttime driving than I do daytime seeing. I just recently spent 2 days going to and 2 days returning from Burning Man, driving for 12+ hours at a time and had no problem at all.
Basically, I recommend it. I love my new eyes.
I had LASIK done last spring as well. My eyes were -9 and -7.5, so I am biased towards ranting.
My eye doctor asked me whether I had any haloes or starbursts when I wore my contacts. I told him I had some light ones. He told me they would likely get a bit worse, and asked me if the risk was acceptable. I told him it was.
I had my work done, went home and rested, and got up the next morning. Holy clarity! It was just like when you've just had a new set of contacts on a new presription.
Almost year and a half ago, I still see like an eagle! Sure, I got some starburts. 95% of the time, they don't really manifest themselves. Mostly, it's a nuisance when I'm in a high contrast environment, like driving when it's dark. But, it was very much worth it to me, since I was quite helpless without optical hardware.
Stop the brainwash
given by this article:
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_681188.htm
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
Oh-please! Don't fall for this nonsense! The mechanisms of myopia and the like are very well studied and understood.
While your "looking habits" probably can do something to your vision during eye developement (i.e. childhood) this whole eye-training thing is totally bogus.
Myopia is not caused by tensions of muscles - strain on those is a result of the (insufficiently corrected) myopia. The reason for myopia is that the eye bulb is too long and thus the image projected by the lens system would be in focus a little in front of the retina. In the case of close objects (e.g. computer screen) this can be compensated by "accomodation" (i.e. focussing closer). Of cause a person with myopia has to focus "harder" compared to a person with regular vision which causes the strain on the eyes, that people experience while reading without glasses (headache, burning eyes, blurred image after some time).
If a myopic person stets the lens for infinty (i.e. focusses on a distant object) the immage remains blurred because we can't focus beyond a certain point which unfortunately is not sufficient for the too long eye ball. Thats why you call it shortsighted: close objects can still be seen in focus while distant ones can't.
If the eye ball is too short the opposite happens.
So what happens if you throw the glasses in the bin and decide to give your eyes some excercise? At first you feel blind becasue you are used to corrected vision and the uncorrected images are impressively bad. After a while you start to get used to be back to bad vision and get the impression of improving vision. Maybe your perception even improves a little over the initial situtation because you (your brain) adapts to the the poor input from the eyes and does all it can to compensate. And our brain is extremely good at dealing with missing or poor data (thats why we don't see our blind spot). If you measure the vision of someone who underwent "eye-training" you find that the vision is just as bad as it was but the person still believes in a miraculous improvement.
Oh and a final personal note: I've been suffering from myopia for a long time now and although I can read without glasses I never do because my eyes get tired of the effort quickly.
Philipp
Signature under construction
Doctor Evil:
Back in the 60's I developed a vision changing machine, which was in essence a sophisticated heat beam which we called a "laser."
Using these "lasers" we punch a hole in the protective layer around the eye which
we called the "cornea". Slowly but surely ultraviolet rays would pour in increasing the
risk of blindness that is...unless..... the world pays us a hefty ransom?
Now the important bit: I'm English, and I hold honours in both physics and maths. I investigated LES in great detail before having it done, and I was totally happy.
Now, you're a /. reader, you must be reasonably smart (hah!), so my recommendation is that you do the same. Learn about the structure of the eye, and what the laser is actually going to do. Don't ask people their opinions cos for every one like me who's been there, there are ten people who tell you their friend's friend had a hole burnt in their retina or whatever.
Just one more thing: I only had one done. It's fine for everything, from coding (I do ~7 ours a day) to driving. It also means that when you get to 40/50 years old, you won't need reading glasses. Neat huh? There was also the minor detail that even though it was (for me) completely pain-free, it scared the living s%^& out of me!
Justin.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
When you walk down the street in a big city in the U.S., look at people. If you look closely, you will see that the walking of most people is not completely free and easy. This is because of chronic muscle tension.
Then, walk down a street in a big city in Brazil, for example Rio de Janeiro. Look only at people who are genetically similar to those in the United States. Although many Brazilians come from the same genetic stock as people in the U.S., Brazilians have much less chronic muscle tension. Their walking is, in general, more natural. From a humanistic view, the U.S. is a difficult place to live even though there is a lot of money, and American's bodies reflect that.
For anyone who is interested, read "Bioenergetics" by Alexander Lowen. Also, read "The Primal Scream" by Arthur Janov. It is not exercise that cures myopia; it is the awareness of inner conflict that comes from the exercise. It is possible to exercise without becoming more aware; someone doing that would not see improvement.
Chronic muscle tension may not be the only reason for myopia, but it is the biggest reason by far.
I had it done a year and a half ago.
I had myopia in the 5-6 diopter range. (Can't remember). I also had REALLY nasty astigmatism.
My astigmatism was severe enough that most of the time, contacts just didn't cut it. They never corrected nearly as well as glasses, and for me were uncomfortable as hell. (Even 3-month disposables - They'd be uncomfortable from Day 1)
The healing process takes a while - If you're a developer you might have a problem for a month or two. And you'll be attached to your bottle of artificial tears for a few months. 1.5 years later, I usually only need tears in the morning (Honestly, I needed them before the surgery, I've always had dry eyes in the morning.). I have 20/20 vision in both eyes, and it's wonderful.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
See here for more info.
hth
- Derwen
http://fsfeurope.org/
I've worn glasses for myopia full-time since my ninth birthday. I turn 40 in just a few months. Sure, glasses are a pain sometimes, but they work well for me. I've had the same prescription for over twelve years; it still corrects my vision to 20/15.
I'm a programmer/analyst by trade. There is no bloody way I am going to risk my vision on a wacky, unnatural invasive procedure like LASIK. I don't care how good the surgeon is or how minimal the risk is. With my luck, I'd end up being one of the poor souls whose eyesight has been permanently and irretrievably screwed by this procedure.
No, thanks--I'll keep my glasses and my eyesight. To the daredevils out there, I only have one thing to say:
Good luck.
And I love it. I'm going to reiterate what a lot of people have been saying that you should definitely get a doctor that has had a lot of experience with the procedure. It has been a little over a month since my surgery and I was -5/-3 with an astigmatism of less than -1. My vision had not changed in over four years (which they told me that your vision has to at least have been stable for a year in order to be a candidate for the surgery). You must realize that this is a surgery and I would not mess around with my eyes. I went to the best for my surgery although the cost was very high. The part of the surgery that is the most critical actually isn't the surgery itself but the measurements they take of your eye before the surgery. These measurements are what they use to program the laser. It took over three hours to get all the measurements done while the surgery itself only took maybe thirty minutes. The place where I got my LASIK surgery had access to equipment that not very many places do. They had a machine that uses lasers to take a precise prescription of your eye. No looking through lenses and trying to tell which looks better, number one or two, one or two... Also, if they use a ruler in a dark room to try to measure the size of your cornea in complete darkness I'd suggest going somewhere else. Since I had a fairly large pupil (which was determined by the measurement of my pupil in complete darkness) they used a different laser on my eyes; one that would cover a larger diameter to accomadate my larger pupils. The rooms where they performed the surgery with the lasers were also climate controlled. They controlled the humidity and the germ level and everything. They had every angle covered. The doctor had even hired a statistician to compile his results since he knew that his results were better then average. For myopia of a -5 and an astigmatism of -1 or less, his results for patients seeing 20/20 the next day were 98%. That definitely helped sell me on the surgery with my doctor. After the surgery I was seeing 20/16. I'm a developer and I have no problems with my eyesight at work. I had my surgery on a Friday and was working again with no problems on Monday; I could have easily of worked the next day though. The only problem I had with the surgery is some slight haloing/starbursting around lights at night but it is fading dramatically with each passing week. I was aware of this problem when I got the surgery though as I had talked to a lot of people before and they said that they experienced the haloing/starbursting as well but that it faded after a few months. My experience with LASIK was excellent and I would highly recommend it. Just make sure you get a reputable doctor with lots of experience and high quality equipment.
Both Intacs and Lasik have a risk of night-vision halos and reduced contrast, so I've been holding back myself. See Clearly Now, as others posted, seems to be a scam.
In the past few months, a new type of extended-wear contact lens was approved. Only Novartis/Cibavision is making it; it's called "Focus Night & Day". The contacts are made of a new material that lets 6x more oxygen into your eye than regular contacts, attracts your tears to keep itself moist, and has a special coating that prevents bacteria (and possibly virus) buildup. After 30 days, there's no noticeable buildup on the lens.
Basically, these solve all the problems that the 1980s extended-wear contacts had. You can keep these in for up to 30 days! (And then you throw them away: no care required.) It's actually better for your eye health than regular contacts due to the increased oxygen flow. A year's supply costs around $250, cheaper than daily disposables.
I have an appointment tomorrow to get these. I never end up wearing my contacts because I take lots of naps, am lazy, hate splashing saline all over the counter, get dry eyes, etc. So for me, it sound like it will solve the inconvenience and mess of contacts without any of the risks of today's surgeries.
The one disadvantage: It won't help if you have astigmatism greater than 1.5, as torics are not yet available in the US (I think they may be in other countries). It sounds like the fit may take a bit of getting used to as well.
CIBA has a web site: www.nightanddaycontacts.com
Can you tell I'm excited?
I'm waiting.
I stopped shopping/thinking about RK or LASIK when my dad had cataract surgery. He got a new lens and better vision for less money than the laser treatment costs!
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
A couple of years ago, I looked into this, and frankly, I was not convinced that the technology had been perfected. Worse still, the few people for whom the surgery did go wrong, were told that they were crazy, discredited, etc. Yet when careful medical analysis was done by third parties, yes - there was evidence of permanent damage having been done. True, you can go get cornea transplants for like $10,000 per eye to repair the damage.
The horror stories were just too horrifying.
I decided to wait a couple of years to see if the Lasik procedure had matured or evolved. It has not. Basically, the company has created their "product" - and is now sitting back and raking in royalties from the surgeries. (about 80% of the cost of the surgery is royalties that go back to the company that makes the machines - the surgeon has to pay-per-use, in addition to paying for the hardware).
I also waited to see if a competing technology had evolved - it involved inserting a clear polymer torus into the cornea to change the shape - the important bit was that it was reversible. The company was bought out and shut down.
Finally, I had my optometrist do a check up on me to see if Lasik was right for me - as it turns out - it is not, because I get dry eyes. My eyes were damaged as a teen from sensitivity to thimerosol in my contact lens solutions - (they don't use thimerosol anymore, because many people were sensitive to it).
The new contact lenses, I can wear, in a limited fashion, about 8 hours a day at the most, and maybe 2-3 days a week. That's enough for me. I wear glasses the rest of the time.
MOST importantly:
The CURE for dry eyes!!!!
If anyone out there is suffering from dry eyes - try taking 1000mg of FLAX SEED OIL a day. Flax seed oil is a dietary supplement, and it's sold mostly at health-food stores and such, in the aisle with all the bee pollen, ox bile, and other garbage. But from experience, Flax seed oil REALLY does work for dry eyes. I used to be totally fatigued by 5pm, and unable to read my computer screen anymore. I even had to stop reading books for pleasure, because I just couldn't keep my eyes open from dry eyes. The Flax seed oil really helps. And it's a lot less annoying than having to stop and put in drops every half hour.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I've been diagnosed with kerataconus (sp?), severely in one eye and mildly in the right. It's a condition which distorts the cornea and having it disqualifies me for any laser treatment.
My opthamologist has given me two options, one being hard contacts, the other being corneal transplant. I'm deeply uncomfortable with contacts. I tried them during adolescence and couldn't deal with putting objects in my eyes and found the actual insertion to be diffucult. Also, I can't always count on having a lifestyle where the accessories of wearing contacts can always be at hand. Sometimes I go on extended trips living out of a small backpack.
So far my opthamologist has been stalling on the transplant surgery, but I'm starting to feel a sense of urgency as my right eye has gotten bad enough that I'm considering an eyepatch. As it is, input from the really bad eye is starting to interfere with how my brain inerprets signals from the sort of ok eye. it's to a point where I don't feel comfortable driving at night.
What should I be taking into account, here?
. We've got computers, we're tapping phone lines, you know that ain't allowed - Talking Heads, "Life During Wartime"
You are exactly the sort of person who is at the greatest risk for damage. It's not a particularly huge risk you're taking, it's just bigger than the risk of LASIK problems. Or was at the time I was considering the operation.
And just three weeks ago they noticed a scrape in my right eye.
Um, yeah. The people who get in trouble tend to wear extended lenses "too long" (whatever that means) and don't get checkups as often as you. Scratches are bad, and contacts can (a) cause scratches, and (b) interfere with the healing process. But as with LASIK, the odds are on your side. 99% of extended-wear users probably don't have any problems worse than yours.
I play Nerd-Folk!
Probably posted too late to get noticed, but WTF...
(Humor) What to expect from your LASIK surgery:
1. When you stretch out on the table, you will be offered a teddy bear to hold. You will say "no thanks" because you are a mature adult with no need for stuffed animals. But trust us: take the teddy bear.
2. The doctor will numb your eye and prop it open with a lid speculum. The word speculum should make you think of a gynecological procedure involving a cold surgical instrument. If you can't imagine this, just think of two metal spoons wedging your eyelids open.
3. Relax.
4. A ring will be pressed on your eye and suctioned to the cornea. You may feel some discomfort.
5. Please, for the love of all that is holy, stare directly into the red light. If you can't do this one simple thing then maybe you shouldn't have this procedure!
6. A cutting instrument is attached to the suction ring. This blade will cut a flap in your eye to open the cornea like a flip-top box. The doctor will then dry your cornea by blowing on it as if it's a hot cup of coffee.
7. The laser is programmed to vaporize layers of your corneal tissue. For you, this will take one solid minute. It will be the longest minute of your life. The odor of burning hair will pervade your flesh. This is normal.
8. If you flinch, we cannot be held responsible for vaporizing tissue that should not be vaporized. Please be aware that something could go wrong, horribly wrong, at any time during the procedure. This may add a dimension of frantic urgency to your spirituality.
9. The doctor will use a tiny squeegee to put your corneal flap back in place. A shield will be placed over your eye. No stitches are used to hold the flap in place. If you rub your eye or put pressure on it, the flap may come loose or get folded over and then you will be sorry. Please refrain from poking yourself in the eye until the flap has healed.
10. Don't worry about putting the stuffing back into the teddy bear. Our staff handles that.
When violence rules the world outside / And the headlines make me want to cry / It's not the time to just keep quiet
The rest of it is all good.
I recommend that you do your homework and you get the best surgeon your money can buy you. I wouldn't trust my eyes to the $500 per eye people. I went to the guy that did Tiger Woods. Dr. Watkins, across the street from White Flint Mall, in Bethesda/Rockville, Maryland. As far as I know, he doesn't do his own screening. You go to one of the referring Ophthamologists, who figure out if you're a good candidate, then you go to Dr. Watkins for the laser. It's like an assembly line once you get there, but you're paying a lot of money ($5500 for me, but my medical plan membership gave me a discount to $3600), so they give you lots of personal service. I didn't actually have anything to do with Dr. Watkins except for the 5 minutes it took him to do my eyes. I asked him if he really did Tiger Woods and he said "Yes. He laid in that exact same chair."
The thing that really sold me was the testimonials: They've got a binder with pictures of all the famous people who've gone through there: Every major sport - football players, baseball players, basketball, hockey, tennis, golf; there's astronauts, movie stars, CEO's, foreign royalty (Saudi Princes and such) - pretty much anyone they'd put on the cover of Time. I figured if it was good enough for those people, it was good enough for me. The lobby is filled with autographed golf bags, baseballs, footballs, etc. If you managed to rob the place, you could make a killing on E-bay.
Can you think of anyone who's more dependent on his eyes than Tiger Woods? Don't you think he researched it and got about a million dollars worth of advice beforehand? I did research, too. I found out that most people who had problems (2 years ago, anyway) were going to cut-rate doctors. They would then come to Dr. Watkins to ask him to fix their problems. There's lots of doctors who do marginal candidates or even people whose eyes are so far from the norm that there's no way LASIK could help them. These are most of the people that are complaining.
For all you people on here advising against it because you had a bad experience: How much research did you do? How many opinions did you get? Did you use a coupon and try to find the cheapest price? Were you a marginal candidate and still chose to undergo the surgery? Are you an Ophthamologist afraid of losing more business?
There's a lot of options for correcting bad eyesight. LASIK was the right choice for me. I did a lot of research. I asked a lot of questions. I read all kinds of books and pamphlets. I'm an intelligent, thinking, rational human being and I can assess how much of a risk I'm willing to subject myself to. If I needed to do it over, I would. I've got 20/15 vision in both eyes and I love not having to wear glasses. It's especially nice when I'm going swimming. No fumbling with clips. No messing with contacts.
As an interesting side note, there's apparently a slight magnification that's done by glasses. Without glasses, things appear just a little smaller. Apparently, the only person to have ever noticed this is Tiger Woods. He told the doc on one of his follow-up visits that golf balls seemed a little smaller to him. My respect for the guy went up even further after I heard that. I think there's a reason he's the best golfer around.
Having -- and hating -- to wear glasses, I wish lasik were absolutely cast-iron 100% guaranteed. But I'm blind in one eye, so even if it ever gets to 99.9999%, it's that last decimal place that will prevent me from getting the work done.
"How many light bulbs does it take to change a person?" --BMcC-->
High pass means pass through high frequency (eg. spots and other blemishes) while removing low frequency (ie. overall shape). Some video cameras use low pass filters when they see skin tones (programmable for all races!) and in fact in my work we use a high pass filter when we want just the blemishes on someone's face. But don't ask why we do that, we just do.
-- SIGFPE
Mirnav: This is for real. The eye is very plastic. If the muscles did not hold the eye in a bad position, the vision would be perfect.
You said, "... entertain the thought that my myopia that started at the age of 7 was caused by an excessively tense lifestyle in elementary school!"
The problem is not elementary school. Babies need constant contact with a loving person. If they don't have it, they grow up with considerable inner conflict. Check one of my other posts in this sub-thread about genetically similar people in Brazil and the United States. In Brazil, parents typically hold their babies constantly. (They bring their babies to parties and dance with them, for example.) This is the major reason that Brazilians have far fewer physical problems than Americans. Often, Americans put their babies in a crib in another room.
It is not logical to focus just on myopia. Many Americans are physical wrecks. A very large percentage are obese; the U.S. is the most obese country in the world, with the exception of a Pacific island where the diet is heavy in coconut fat. Americans have chronic muscle tension in many of the muscle groups, not just the eye muscles.
Social problems exist in every nation of the world. However, the U.S. is the worst in the world in several ways: 1) Obesity, 2) Killing other people, 3) Spying on people, 4) Putting people in prison. What goes around comes around. The U.S. is a difficult place to live, in many ways, and American's bodies reflect that.
Using Brazil as an example again, I have been told that the last time the Brazilian government killed someone in war was 1822. I'm not sure this is true. I am sure that the U.S. government killed more than 2,000,000 people in the last 35 years in war. For more about the tendency of the U.S. culture to violence, see my article What should be the Response to Violence? .
Before the mayor of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, cleaned up the mess during the Viva Rio movement, Rio was notorious for violence. The city had a murder rate then of something like 45 murders per year per 100,000 population. The rate in Washington, D.C. is 77.
Instead of seeing the world in a friendly, socially sophisticated way, the U.S. culture tends to see things in an adversarial way. This causes inner conflict in U.S. citizens.
It's a big transition, I know, realizing that, all your life, people have been lying to each other about their inner reality. But it's true.
As I mentioned in another comment in this sub-thread, read "The Primal Scream" by Arthur Janov.
When your vision *is* corrected, do you have depth perception? I'm in a similar boat (although not quite as bad--just three diopters difference) as you. Corrected (glasses or not), I still don't have depth perception. I went for so long as a kid with unbalanced uncorrected vision that my brain doesn't have highly developed depth perception.
I can obtain depth perception one of two ways: 1. use glasses with orthogonally polarized lenses (think 3D polorized lenses)
2. Eat acid.
Neither way is really conducive to work. =) I was wondering if you had found anything that might be of assistance.
You have missed the point a little.
It is what happens as a very young child that causes the problems, generally.
Also, I was giving you an example of how it could be true that large numbers of people have chronic muscle tension. Maybe it does not apply to you, however. Obviously, I would have no way of knowing anything specific about you.
Two people who love each other sometimes unknowingly traumatize their child, so it is not impossible. It is extremely common that someone says that he or she had loving parents when, in fact, he or she was traumatized. The two are not inconsistent.
One more experience to add to your tally...
I wore contact lenses for 9 years, up until this past spring. I always hated the contacts, since they were a nuisance to put in, take out, take care of, etc. I hated glasses even more, though, since they didn't do as much for me (especially annoying was the lack of peripheral vision when wearing glasses).
Last winter, I got an infection in my eye from the contacts, and couldn't wear them for a few weeks. The eye doctor told me that that's not uncommon in contact wearers, even if you've gone for ten years with no problems. He said it can happen again any time, or maybe never again.
After that, I started seriously considering getting laser surgery. I'd thought about it a couple of years ago, but decided that the failure rate (about 3-4% at the time) was too high for me to risk. I did some research into the procedure, and into various doctors. I found an excellent doctor (one of the pioneers of the surgery, considered one of the best at it in the country, yada yada yada), and spoke to him about my concerns. He told me about the recent developments (flying-spot, for example) which addressed many of my concerns, discussed his history with other patients, and his methods. He really set my mind at ease.
To make a long story not-quite-as-long, I decided to get the surgery done. I had the LASIK procedure in mid-April. It was quick and painless, and worked perfectly. My vision went from 20/200 or so to 20/15 in both eyes. There were no complications, my night vision is fine, my eyes are fine, I can sit in front of a computer for hours every day without problems.
I've been recommending this surgery to people who ask me about it, and recommending this particular doctor, who did an excellent job, and takes good care of his patients.
The one thing to consider is that the long-term effects aren't really known. The surgery hasn't been around for very long, so nobody really knows for sure what might happen 20 or 30 years down the road.
The theory explains much of what happens in the world. Look around. Read the books. It's a difficult experience to realize this, but a growthful one. Whether anything I said applies to you, I don't know.
It's unfortunate that you have turned hostile. I was only trying to be helpful.
The reasons given were that one lens would produce an image considerably smaller than the other lens, and I'd eventually get headaches from trying to "merge" the two images. There was also the fact that the glasses would make my eyes look odd (one larger than the other) -- and yes, I'm that vain.
I do have good depth perception once my vision is corrected. My vision didn't start deviating until I was in fourth grade, and even then, it was 20/20 and 20/30. Over the years, one eye has gotten better and the other much worse.
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