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Laser Eye Surgery, Revisited 10 Years Later
gunner_von_diamond (3461783) happened upon Ask Slashdot: Experiences with Laser Eye Surgery from ten years ago, and asks: I was just reading a story on /. from 10 years ago about Lasik Eye Surgery. Personally, I've had Lasik done and loved every single part of the surgery. I went from wearing contacts/glasses every day to having 20/15 vision! In the older post, everyone seemed to be cautious about it, waiting for technical advances before having the surgery. Today, the surgery is fairly inexpensive [even for a programmer :) ], takes about 10-15 minutes, and I recovered from the surgery that same day. So my question is: what is holding everyone else back from freeing themselves from contacts and glasses?
I don't have enough material in my cornea. If they mess it up, there's not much they can do for adjustments.
As long as your eyeball remains parabolic, they can correct your vision more or less indefinetly assuming there's no other issues going on. Once you get lasik, your cornea becomes flattened so they can't really correct stuff with optics so well anymore.
I'd rather be safe and be able to have my vision correctable by contacts and glasses than take a chance at having really terrible vision that is then uncorrectable.
I feel like that's something people need to be made more aware of - lasik flattens your cornea so corrective lenses won't really work as well.
my gf got it about 7-8 years ago and is very annoyed that it has 'worn out' (of course that's just macular degeneration or whatever) and assuming it could be done again it would still cost her another few thousand
I don't know if they didn't know how long the Lasik would last, but they certainly didn't tell her that it could wear off in less than a decade....
So now she has gone back to wearing glasses, which are covered by healthcare
-I'm just sayin'
I have keratoconus, which means it can't be done, otherwise I would have jumped on board a long time ago.
There is actually a treatment available for it, which Europe has been doing since 1998 with great results (something like 90% of their patients see improved eyesight with 9% having progression of the disease stopped, and 1% experiencing any negative effects which usually are temporary,) but our glorious FDA overlords still won't approve of the operation in the US. Meanwhile those who do have the disease eventually progress to blindness and require a cornea transplant. There's even a pharma company with big pockets (Avedro) who is trying to push for FDA approval, but even they can't get them to budge.
The thing that's holding me back is what are the long term effects? The technology really hasn't been around for a long time. I'm in my early 30s; I could maybe live for another 50 years! What will be the effects when I'm in my 80s?
I've heard that people who get the surgery may need to have it redone in 10-15 years. What happens after the 3rd or 4th redo? Can one even see? Are there other potential sideeffects?
That's really the only thing holding me back. My vision, present and future, is too important to risk. Glasses get the job done just fine.
-"Those who fought today will die tommorow."-
In Britain the DVLA are looking at their policies.
Drivers who have had eye surgery are generally marked as never requiring corrective lenses. But the DVLA have found numerous instances of drivers eyesight falling below minimum standards after laser eye surgery.
This laser eye surgery is not, in all people at least, permanent.
Obviously, in the DVLA's case, their answer is "We don't care... if you're below minimum standard - whatever the reason - you need to report it to us and wear some kind of corrective lens until you can prove otherwise". Which is sensible.
As a glasses wearer all my life, my eyes have stabilised. But laser-eye surgery is not only vastly oversold by marketers posing as doctors, but also not permanent. I could spend several thousand pounds and risk my eyesight (no surgery is without risk) in order to get out of a habit I've been in for the last 20 years that doesn't actually affect my life often at all (my prescription is unchanged for 10+ years, I've had the same three sets of glasses - including sunglasses - for 10+ years, I rarely break things like that, and the microsecond it takes to put them on in the morning and take them off at night is negligible).
That's why.
He had Lasik and they messed up, but it was partly due to a pre-existing issue he had with his eyes. Now he has to take some medicine & eye drops every day.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
That's how a friend's father, an eye surgeon, put it.
It doesn't always go right, and (yes, rarely) it goes very wrong. There are no take-backs with the laser surgeries.
If you must, do the surgery that is reversible - they insert a small piece of plastic that corrects the lens shape.
Please help metamoderate.
Quite frankly, and this sounds stupid, but I'm emotionally attached to my glasses. I'm 42 now, and I've been wearing glasses since I was six. Frankly I don't even remember what it was like without them. I freely admit it's an irrational and emotional response, but I like my glasses.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Yes, the older cheaper version of lasik did result in halos and star bursts at night, however for many years now the newer version of lasik does correct for higher order aberrations. I believe it is called 3d wavefront technology. They perform a 3d scan of the eye prior to the surgery and thus can correct for higher order aberrations. The older and significantly cheaper lasik was only a 2d scan. I had lasik done with the newer technology 8 years ago and still have 20/10 vision with no degradation thus far and no post operation issues. I'm fairly certain the percentage of people who have post operation problems is at most a few percent.
Not sure where you went but my procedure involved nothing of the sort... ?
Full disclosure: I had PRK not LASIK. PRK is the older tech that I was forced to have because of a severe case of GPC. The difference at least in simple terms is as follows: With LASIK they use a laser or a blade to slice a flap off of your eye. They do the correction then the flap is repositioned. This results in extremely quick healing because it resembles a paper cut. With PRK they remove the front covering of your eye. Do (seemed like) the exact same correction procedure but then let the surface of your eye grow back from 'scratch'. Healing is significantly longer in duration and discomfort BUT they can use this method where LASIK isn't good (in my case severe risk of hemorrhage) AND they are able to do a better job at repair as well with less of the side effects (my night vision was completely unhindered).
I was fully conscious and had full eyesight for the entire procedure. It's actually kind of surreal as the whole thing is going on then (with PRK) they place a "band-aid" contact on the eyes while they do their initial healing. 5 days later those come off and you enter the "OCD with 5 different kinds of eyedrops" phase for about a month. After the 5 days tho I was fully functional just my comfort and vision improved as the days passed. Completely normal by about 3 months. Immediately after the procedure I tested 20/10 but settled out to about 20/15 as the healing progressed.
Honestly it's the best money I've ever spent. Yes there is the probability that my vision will slip over time but 6 years in with no complications or slide yet and I'm happy with the investment. Eventually as I get older this doesn't stop the tendency towards presbyopia either but I'll take readers over my old vision any day!
I'm 41, and I've also been wearing glasses since I was 6. However, I don't like them, even though I always wear them. The recent invention of soft toric contacts saved me from ever having to consider Lasik, though.
Yep. My dad's an ophthalmologist, and he doesn't recommend LASIK for anyone over 30 because of this (except in a handful of unusual circumstances). You're trading off future reading vision for distance vision now, and the older you get the closer "now" becomes.
I'll gladly keep my ability to read without holding things at arm's length or putting on reading glasses for as long as possible, though admittedly my distance vision isn't that bad (I wear my contacts if I'm going to a movie or something, but I don't need to wear them for normal daily life) and I was already pushing 30 by the time LASIK really matured (about 10 years ago)
If you're, say, 26 now (so you'll get a good 14-20 years of fully corrected vision) and have terrible distance vision, LASIK may make a lot more sense.
rage, rage against the dying of the light
Having done the procedure, the creepy factor is the only negative. It is legitimately terrifying, but not painful.
I'm in my mid 30s and had -8.00 with another -1.00 astigmatism and I just had custom waveform Lasik done this month. The double and triple vision around bright objects is still very annoying after 3 weeks, even if my eyesight is 20/20 now. It's particularly bad in PuTTY or anything else that uses white text on a black background. I seriously hope it goes away within the next few months.
Morphing Software
Where I went, everybody got 1 Valium and they gave you a stress ball to squeeze while everything was going on. Everything else sounds the same, except I didn't get a band-aid of any sort, they just put the flap back and I went home. Drove myself to the follow up the next morning at 8am.
Agree that you can smell the laser burning your eye away. That's one thing they never said up front. You can't feel or see anything other than a blurry blinking red spot, and you hear some clicking as the laser pulses, but that was all expected.
Morphing Software
Somewhere around 10-15 years back, I was in the Robonaut lab at Johnson Space Center (a friend of mine was being promoted to full colonel, and because she helped oversee the Robonaut lab, they were having Robonaut pin her insignia on her; side note: having to pin it was absolutely terrifying the operator, since Robonaut had no sense of touch, and he was petrified that he'd stab his boss with her own insignia pin). From what I could see, Robonaut's head at the time was a seamless, translucent, amber-colored, resin material that was visibly hollow on the inside. I asked one of the engineers how they managed to do that, since I wasn't aware of any manufacturing techniques to make a solid object that was both seamless and hollow. As I recall it, he basically explained something along the lines of a liquid resin bath with multiple lasers shining into it, and where they intersected, the resin hardened. Basically, a form of 3D printing using lasers.
Why do I bring that up? I bring it up to illustrate the fact that what we're doing with lasers is advancing all the time. Likewise, the hardware, software, and techniques for laser eye surgery are constantly getting better. Yet despite that, they have yet to address the fundamental source of most complications: the creation of the flap so that the laser has a surface onto which to do its work.
But Robonaut's resin head tells me that the technology should be possible to not need that flap at all. I figure it's just a matter of a few more years before we have better imaging of the cornea or new techniques for using the lasers, meaning we can make the necessary adjustments to skip the flap. And if we did that, it'd mean that the halos from shallow flaps, dry eyes from cut nerves, or flaps getting detached years later after traumatic impact will all be things of the past. Moreover, it also means that if in a few more years something even better comes around, I won't have a giant incision that never fully heals that might exclude me from being a candidate for that procedure.
If I was confident that the current state of LASIK was as good as it'd ever get, I'd go for it immediately, since it's already "good enough"...the rate of serious complications is remarkably low with modern techniques. But with better stuff almost certainly around the corner (just look at where laser eye surgery was in the '90s compared to today and the trajectory will be apparent), why risk missing out on it by permanently damaging my eye now?
I'm missing part of a finger, but I can manage. I could live with a limp. But eyesight is a pretty big gamble. Yeah its small. But still higher than lottery.
That's why I opted for orthokeratology. I put my lens for one night, once every 7-ish days, and have 30/20 vision for the first 24h and then 20/20 for the rest of the week.
I used to do this. It's surprising how many people have never heard of this. The downside is of course, discomfort. It's a tad hard to sleep with a hard lens in your eye, at least, it was for me. Also, I find contacts to be a lot of hassle; including the fact that washing my hands so much leads to cracks in my fingertips in wintertime.
Still, I think maybe more people should give it a shot. If you miss a night or two, it's no big deal, which is a nice plus. If you stop wearing them at night altogether, it takes your eyes about 2 weeks to go back to their natural state.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
" but if you aren't bothered by glasses and they don't cause you problems then there is no need to get the procedure."
THIS -^
I've never felt the need to have it done (-1.00 and -1.25). I can pretty much function without glasses (reading, computer, taking a walk). Besides, I'm 43 and it would be a waste of money since in a couple of years I'll probably need reading glasses anyway. And, I only have one set of eyes, I won't risk losing one of them...
The *only* advantage of having it done would be I could wear different sunglasses every day (girls have shoes, I have sunglasses :)
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
Actually you're right, that was a typo. Try 20:700 20:900!
Without correction I could literally not see any part of the eye chart on the wall. First car at a red light? Without correction I couldn't see the stoplight much less what color it was!
One day my dr told me it would be a week or two before my contacts would be in because they had to manufacture them. Puzzled I asked why and was told that there was little enough demand that they didn't keep any in the shelf. I then asked how much stronger I could go before they didn't make anything stronger. My dr told me they made a few stronger but not to worry because we could switch manufacturers and find some even stronger! That day scared the crap out of me because I realized I might really be getting to a point where correction became very difficult. It was probably an additional 4+ years before LASIK came along, thankfully I never needed a stronger prescription. I'm still supposed to get dilated yearly so they can check inside, a detached retina is apparently a very real possibility since my eye is so "long". They dilate me because otherwise it's like trying to look into a room thru a peephole - their words not mine.
The prospect of losing ones vision is damned scary to say the least :-(
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