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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?
Given that I have a few telescopes and I have been stargazing for ~30 years, I really value my night sight. Knowing that the majority of the laser surgeries have a significant proportion of post-operation aberrations that would directly affect my stargazing abilities is a real hindrance to my taking up the eye surgery.
Halos and diffraction spikes around bright objects, increased glare at night, are all relatively common issues to be dealt with afterwards. Most people aren't bothered by this as they rarely come across the situations where these aberrations would show up (exception being night-time driving).
If the surgeries were able to correct higher-order aberrations and a proper wavefront restoration across a portion of the eye that would be larger than the relaxed iris, then it might be a possibility for me. However, the tech is not yet mature for this, for my use cases.
- This sig deliberately left blank. Nothing to see, move along.
Maybe it's just silly, but I'm really scared of someone shooting a laser into my eye. I don't want to be that 0.01% of cases that has something horrible happen.
I can get glasses that last for 5+ years for a couple hundred dollars, vs. lots more for surgery with its inherent risks. My glasses are generally only annoying when I work outside & get sweaty.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
I rather like my glasses, so I don't see this as a horrible burden to be freed from.
Last I looked, you couldn't become an astronaut if you had laser eye surgery?
...my astigmatism is too great for lasik.
It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.
My eyes don't line up in the exact same place when I look at things. I had surgery when I was 15 to correct it, after 20 years, it's coming back a little (although to a much less significant degree). Fortunately, it's small enough that I can use lenses to correct it - I have to wear bifocals now - but that also means that Lasik will never work for me to improve my vision. I could have better than perfect vision in each eye and I'd still need corrective lenses. :|
Give a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day. But light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
Has anyone ever done a comparison of color vision before and after laser eye surgery?
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'm not a candidate because my eyes never stop changing. So if I had it, in a year or two I'd just need glasses again.
When the figure out a way to "stabilize" the eye itself, or whatever's affecting things, then great. But until then, glasses/contacts for me.
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.
And he did some gross stuff so NO THANKS!
The surgery costs far more than many years worth of glasses, and my eyes are still changing slightly year-to-year. I'm not getting a surgery knowing that my vision will still deteriorate afterwards. Maybe I'm just imagining the cost is higher than it is. Call me when it's $300 and I'll start looking into it.
Plain old fear and nothing more. My contacts are rarely a hassle and I've been told that I look really good in my glasses, so I'm loathe to do anything to my eye that could harm it in any way. I still wonder what the long term (30 years+) consequences are and if a better procedure will eventually be developed. Until I can't wear my contacts anymore, I'm inclined to wait.
I've had a few flare-ups of iritis (it really sucks) and I'd be afraid of it coming back due to the trauma associated with the surgery.
Interestingly enough I stopped having problems once I started eating more collard greens.
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."-
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.
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.
I can wear my glasses, contacts any time i want with no loss of vision. I can buy a new prescription with brand new glasses for a fourth(or less) of the cost of lasik. I guess for me, the thought of having my vision permanently disabled because my lense doesnt heal back properly after they slice it open, or they mess up some terrible way it enough to keep me using the non-surgical routes. I'm a developer, if i lose my eye site, i lose my job. Not worth the risk.
Apart from the stories I've heard of corrections gone wrong, I don't really want to get rid of my glasses for nearsightedness to only have to get new glasses for reading as my eyes age. Multi-focal contacts allow me to shed both, so that's what I'm sticking with at the moment.
Mostly because as a general technical rule I don't trust my balls with private institutions unless they're highly regulated
If you go in for Lasik but they end up operating on your balls, I think there's a real problem there.
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.
That said, it was a fairly terrifying experience at the time. Head strapped down and being told repeatedly not to move. Then there was the smell of burning eyeball. That was the worst part.
But not needing to wear glasses under my motorcycle helmet has made up for all of that. From the people I've talked to they say they're use to glasses / contacts and they don't feel it's worth the risk / expense.
Bodies vary. No two surgical procedures are the same.
People are always saying something like "a hernia repair is nothing," when what they mean is "MY hernia repair was nothing."
Even if YOUR LASIK went well... ...even if MOST LASIKs so well... ...even if ALMOST ALL LASIKs go well... ...you have to multiply the probability by the consequences.
First, start thinking about what a 1% chance means. For example, I've had blood drawn literally hundreds of times, and donated blood dozens of times. The phlebotomists always tell me I have "beautiful veins." It's nothing. Nothing at all. Then one day, for absolutely no reason I could tell, I was having a blood draw for some tests, didn't hurt, didn't feel clumsy... and ten minutes later there was a big black and blue lump that didn't go away for days and hurt enough to be annoying. That was probably an example of a "less than 1% chance" where the risk showed up.
The thing is, a 1% chance of getting an annoying bruise is no big deal. But a 1% chance of lousing up one of your eyes is.
Given a refractive error that can be completely corrected a) without surgery (i.e. a lens) or b) with surgery, one should be cautious about choosing surgery. It is, after all, UNNECESSARY surgery.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
My cornea has what the doctor says is a 'fog', an unknown disorder which makes me a very poor candidate. Sister has it as well.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
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.
My eyes are actually beyond sensitive, an eye phobia is probably a better way to describe it. When I go to my ophthalmologist they occasionally have to bring in additional people to hold my eyes open so I can take the dilation drops (even though I do that every year and have for decades).
So no, I am not a candidate for Lasik. Not now, and likely not ever.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I Lasik on both my eyes 7 years ago, and it was the best $4000 I ever spent. Went from 20/50 and 20/200 to 20/15 and it hasn't changed since. My big concern was dry eyes. Mine were dry frequently at first but after about 6 months it went away and now it's like I had good vision from the start, I don't have to take any extra care than average. I don't have any haloes or night vision problems either. Sometimes at night I still marvel at how crisp all the neon lights look from a distance.
My advice on the whole thing:
1 - Don't cheap out, you only have 2 eyes. Go to the best place in town. They offered a "custom wavefront" option for a few hundred more, basically it was a better/more automated scanning technique that helped customize the procedure for my eyes and I went for it. The procedure I had used a laser to cut the corneal flap and I think the entire thing was automated, the doctor just verified everything and then hit "go".
2 - Follow all their instructions to the letter and beyond. I wore the night goggle things twice as long as they said to and was religious about taking the different eyedrops, not swimming, not touching my eyes, etc etc. I didn't rub my eyes for 18 months but now I do whenever I feel like it. I wear safety glasses when I'm doing woodworking but the occasional chip still sneaks in there and it doesn't cause any more problems than normal. Anyway I didn't have a single hint of a complication and I think following the directions went a long ways towards achieving those results.
3 - Wait until your prescription doesn't change for a few years before getting lasik. I had to wait until my mid 20's.
The whole summary reads like a radio ad. DICE doesn't even try to hide it anymore.
My contacts cost me $70 for a one year supply. That's about thirty years in comparison. If my contacts become micro-scratched, I throw them away. If lasik gives me halos, I'm screwed. No contest.
As trite as it sounds, it's true: in a professional context, if you wear glasses, your opinion will tend to be valued more. I've seen it both with male and female coworkers of many different races: in meetings, large and small, the folks who wear glasses can almost trivially get everyone to quiet down and listen when they open their mouth. A few words starting with "in my opinion" and everyone else is nodding their heads in agreement.
It's a subconscious thing that still pervades society due to the stigma of glasses-wearers being especially intelligent "book worms" (or now "computer geeks", I guess), but it's still a way to get a leg up in your career. I wore contacts for years, starting late in high school and up through part of college. Group discussions were miserable; I would speak, then get shouted down, and a few minutes later someone with glasses would meekly restate my suggestion and the group would dutifully follow along.
You may THINK that you don't treat glasses-wearers specially, but I can tell you from experience, if there were 100 people reading this message, at least 50 of you would subconsciously be more likely to accept analyses, opinions or facts if they are stated by someone wearing glasses. It doesn't matter if you're male or female, young or old, black, white, yellow, orange, Martian, transgendered, religious, atheist, whatever -- these attributes may also have an effect on the (positive or negative) biases your coworkers may place on you, BUT, if you wear glasses, you will, almost without fail, receive a "benefit of the doubt" when it comes to knowing WTF you're talking about (assuming that no one in the room has readily-available evidence that incontrovertibly contradicts your statements).
I wear glasses, and they only come off when I go to sleep at night.
If you go in for Lasik but they end up operating on your balls, I think there's a real problem there.
That's why not Zoidberg. That right there.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I like the way Clash of Clan looks on my iPhone 5 three inches from my face while reality fades to a soft and silky blur. (Nearsighted)
I had it done about 11 years ago. The day after I had it done, one of the flaps came loose (left eye) and I had to go back to have it re-seated. Then the day after that it came loose again, so I had to have it reseated (again). The day after that it came loose AGAIN, so they put a contact on it and left it there over the weekend, and even after all that, one of the edges of the flap became wrinkled, which makes that eye see more blurry in low-light conditions.
About a month later, my right eye had a sharp pain, so I went to the doc who said nothing was wrong. For the next 6-8 months, I had vision in my right eye that was torqued and weird looking, giving me massive headaches. I went back for a checkup at that point, where they said the edge of the flap on my right eye had come loose, and cells from the surface of that eye had grown under the flap. So we scheduled another appointment, where they lifted that flap, cleaned it out, and put it back. It has stayed in place since then, but there have been other effects:
I can't get less than about 7 hours of sleep per night for longer than a few nights in a row, otherwise my right eye dries out and gets blurry and the headaches come back, I can't sleep on my front because my eyes dry out and I can't see, I can't rub my eyes hard, night vision is significantly worse than day. For about 4 years after the re-seat on the right eye, I had to carry lubricating eye drops around with me all the time.
Even as I type this, my right eye is slightly dry and blurry, giving me a headache. I realize I'm in the 0.1% of people who have issues, but I wish I had just stayed with glasses/contacts. At least you can take those off or out and they don't permanently damage your eyes.
http://www.allaboutvision.com/visionsurgery/prk.htm
I live a very active lifestyle. I do martial arts, dive, play sports, a whole bunch of things that having that lil 'flap' be a problem if it were to ever 'pop' open. Thankfully I spent the extra cash and went with PRK which is the same surgery Air Force pilots get.
What is the big difference? : Simple, there is no flap. They carve off the top of the cornea's layer is removed and is then grown back. No flap, no popping, no worries.
What is the downfall: 3 days of light blinding pain whenever bright light occurs. Thankfully this is negated by modern medicine and covers for your eyes.
What is the upside: This is the first type of LASIK ever invented so it's been done brazillions of times. This is perfected to a state of art and I've had no issues in the 10 years since I've done the surgery. Best money ever spent and not one chance if getting poked in the eye or underwater accident that this 'flap' may (1/1000) pop open.
Was it overkill? Perhaps. But that's one less thing I ever have to worry about.
Wheel of Time: Book by Book and Sumview (summary review) Bigdady92 style: http://bigdady92.blogspot.com/
I'm fifty-five years old and my vision is still 20-20.
Mostly because as a general technical rule I don't trust my balls with private institutions unless they're highly regulated
If you go in for Lasik but they end up operating on your balls, I think there's a real problem there.
That might be overly discounted discount LASIK, probably the kind done in a van with a laser pointer. I would not advise taking up that offer.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Risk - Odds are everything will go fine but my eyes are pretty important to me. Is it that big of an inconvenience wearing contacts? Not for me. Been wearing them for over 25 years with no issues. If I couldn't wear contacts though, laser surgery would have been more tempting. I don't like the narrow field of vision and other visual aberrations you get with glasses.
Age - I talked about laser surgery with my eye doctor when I was in my mid-to-early-30's. He said don't bother because you will need glasses for reading before long. I'm 40 now and still on my same prescription, but my eye(s) did start to decline slightly on my last visit. I'll be using bifocal contacts / reading glasses in the not-so-distant future.
Stupider like a fox! - H.S.
7. Every opthamalogist that I know hasn't had Lasik done on themselves, they still wear glasses.
Have a Day!
Please, for all that is good in this world, for the sake of us all, please, can we finally end the recurring nightmare of the Shark Laser Head Meme.
Do the right thing, and let it die.
Think of the children, think of the humanity, think of all that is right and good and sacred in this world. Do the right thing for the sake of humanity itself, do the right thing because you care and want to do something significant that will add just a little bit more Good in this world.
This world is a terribly shitty place, but each and every one of us can really do something that will make it just a little bit more bearable.
Let the Shark Laser Head Meme DIE!
PLEASE!
I have a condition called Keratoconus, a weakening of the structure of the cornea. I cannot have LASIK done. Unfortunately this condition is often asymptomatic until you are in your 20's, for some it will stay asymptomatic (correctable with glasses) but they still risk serious damage to already weakened corneas if they undergo LASIK. So have it done, sure, but please get your eyes examined by a professional beforehand.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
I was informed by the doctor that at best they would be able to effectively halve the strength of my eyeglass prescription. I would still be so nearsighted that I would not be able to drive legally (or safely for that matter) without prescription lenses, and while I would see measurably better, I would still not see enough better that it would bear any logistical improvement in my daily life. The television would still be a giant blur to me from the couch. Summary: NO THANKS. I will wait until they can fully replace my defective eyes.
I investigated having this surgery a few years ago, in my late forties, with a thorough check at the Kellogg eye center at the University of Michigan. Their conclusion was that my eyes are too dry to be good candidates for this operation. It would cause irritation and even more dryness, and the side effects of halos would be worse with my eyes. Sadder and wiser, I skipped the procedure. I used to wear contact lenses but gave that up after a while for the same reasons. My latest glasses are very lightweight and not much of a bother to wear.
I have always been very near sighted, around a 10 diopter correction. Lasik on it's own wasn't enough to correct my vision, so I looked into getting a contact lens implanted in my eyes. Scared me thinking about it, but it's been almost five years now, and I've not had any problems. The difference in my life has been huge, I can see when I wake up in the middle of the night, and I can see when I swim. Before this without my glasses or contacts I couldn't read anything more than 4 inches from my face. I do have some glare at night I didn't have before, but having lived this experience now I would definitely do it again.
Glasses make me look smarter! I have a severe overbite and a large gap in my front 2 teeth. If it weren't for the fact that I wear glasses, I would look like an idiot.
loved every single part of the surgery
pervert!
In my last eye exam the optometrist noted my corneas are starting to show signs of cataracts. Given my family history (both parents have had surgery for cataracts), I'll probably need corrective surgery within 10 years. I'm hoping that when it comes time to do it I can get intraocular lenses (IOLs) to fix my vision. Since I can get through the day without glasses and only really need them for reading, I've never given laser surgery much thought.
"Could be worse...could be raining." Igor
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
It's never been about cost. Even at the early prices, it was "affordable" for a one-off life-changing surgery.
The issue is the same as it's always been. There is risk. There is virtually zero reward. My vision isn't poor enough that I can't go to the bathroom at night. I wear glasses all day every day, minus sleeping, sex, and swimming. Right now, I have zero problems, and a set of light glasses on my face.
Why would I ever risk damage to my eyes -- which I use to earn every dollar of revenue to fund my life -- when I can do nothing and having everything that I plan to have?
It's an easy decision. I don't opt for voluntary surgery. That's the rule.
My eye doc has warned me against it, because of just the sort of cautions others have expressed: that some very small number of operations go horribly wrong, and there’s no reversal possible after that. He & I are both older, and like all of us who live long enough, will face cataract surgery at some point. He says there’s an artificial lens in trials for cataracts that can both correct your near/far-sightedness and fix age-related inability to focus on near objects (presbyopia). I’ll keep wearing my gas-permeable hard contacts (have worn contacts for 42 years now) until it’s time to fix cataracts and my other vision issues in one fell swoop.
Doctor told me if I got the lasik then in a few years I would require glasses for reading. Whereas now I only need them for reading far away stuff.
He said in a few years the lens (inside my eyes) would naturally harden, as it does for all people. My focal point was 50cm, which is basically perfect for reading. So if I skipped Lasik, then I'd always be able to see/read stuff perfectly near me (monitor, books, etc). If I got the surgery, I could always see far away.
Either way I'd need glasses in a few years. Given my work and play, I'd much rather always have up-close vision available than far-away vision.
I am over 50 and with with another programmer who is over 50. I had thought about it if it got cheap, but then my "neighbor" told me he regrets doing it. He still uses 2 pairs of glasses. He uses readers you can buy anywhere while sitting at his desk and a half reader (nothing on top, reader on bottom) type of bifocal for all other times. He spent a few thousand to have it done and they didn't tell him it doesn't correct for the most common part of getting older, namely being able to see close things.
I am actually thinking about doing lasik. I'll certainly take an appointment this year to ask some questions.
-Is this really permanent?
-I heard that near sightedness helps with Presbyopia at a later age. Isn't fixing near sightedness trading for an earlier Presbyopia?
-What are the actual risks?
-How does it interact with other sight ailment (such as color-blindness)
-I heard of people that still need to wear glasses because their eyes are too dry. Will that happen to me?
My opthamologist. Due to my very poor vision (something like +14 diopter correction, if memory serves) she highly strongly cautioned against Lasik.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
I'm 50 now and I had lasik done 3 years ago. For 2 years prior I had stopped being able to use contacts, age related dry eyes I guess. Right after the surgery I had better than 20/20 vision but I've lost a bit of that. Not enough to make me want to endure a touch-up, not yet anyway. I find during the day and outside I feel I have perfect vision. Into the evening as I get tired and the light drops I notice a real change in acuity. No issues with halos after the first month. To watch TV across the room I need glasses now with a minimal prescription. The operation was pretty pricey at $3800. But the ability for me to go through most day without glasses, not even for reading, is priceless.
As many who have replied to you have already noted, they do full remapping and correct for 2nd and 3rd order abberations. It's amazing tech now. If you can, go in for the free scan where they do a 3d surface map of your eyes, the detail and resolution of the mapping machine is just pure nerd-porn, especially if you're an optics guy. I've done both eyes, and would like to share my story: I've been extremely near-sighted with astigmatism my whole life. I'm now in my late 30s, and my eyes stopped changing in any real fashion about 5 years ago -- they stabilized around -8.75 diopters of correction needed. I'd always worn disposable contacts, but hated being blind at night when they were out. When I was 5 or so, I walked into a branch that left a scar on my left cornea that previously excluded me from lasik -- UNTIL the new 3d wave mapping came out. They did have to use the blade to cut the flap on my left eye (as opposed to the ilasik cutter on the right eye), but I can now see at 20/25 out of my left eye for the first time since I was 5. Previously it was correctable to a best of 20/40. They actually almost totally removed the scar tissue automagically while at the same time corrected for the extreme nearsightedness. I'm a believer. If you are worried about the night vision effects, those are truly present in the first couple of months. Those that say they're not are the same people that don't notice the low bitrate on satellite radio.. ;)
After about a year, however, I personally have zero effects, starbursts, rings, hazing, or lack of contrast anymore. It takes a while for the lens to heal up, but it did for me.
Negatives:
I now need UV protection in the sun. I didn't realize that my contacts previously provided UV blocking, and the sun is annoying now without sunglasses.. :)
If your cornea is naturally very thin, you're ineligible for LASIK because the whole point is to ablate away part of the cornea. I had IOL surgery instead, which is like an implanted contact lens. The trouble with IOL surgery is that there's a 1% chance you'll get a cataract from the lens accidentally rubbing against your natural lens. This ended up happening to me in one eye 12 months after surgery. To their credit, the clinic where I had it done got me back in and gave me a complete lens replacement in that eye at no charge.
Now, a post-cataract-surgery eye is not as good as a normal eye. I would need glasses again were it not for the fact that my other eye is working perfectly with the IOL. So I have one 20/10 eye and one 20/80 eye, but to be honest it's not something I actually notice day to day; the visual cortex sorts it out for you. I do use reading glasses for long computer sessions.
If I had it to do again, I would still do it, because for me life with glasses and contacts was full of daily annoyances and constraints that I no longer have to put up with. Even if I develop presbyopia, my vision will never again be anywhere near as horrendous as it was before surgery. I had a diopter around -8, plus astigmatism. The convenience of life without glasses is worth the hassle of having one post-cataract eye.
Also, one option people often don't think to explore is that you can have _just your astigmatism_ corrected in an outpatient procedure. This procedure is quick and easy and it allows you to use cheaper glasses and contacts (no more "toric" contacts).
I am one who opted to get the surgery. It was a couple of months ago. I am in my mid thirties with mild astigmatism. (-2.75, -2.25) My prescription for glasses or contacts had not changed in more than three years.
I actually had pre-op workups done at several centers in town that perform the surgery. I did not like the way TLC, Spectrum, and some others have a medical office, but the surgeon only comes to town one day a month. There is an eye doctor that has her practice locally and specializes in cornea related problems. She has the same lasers and surgery equipment as the cattle car like outfits.
I was able to view her surgery equipment and she was very thorough in answering all my questions. My corneas were on the thin end of the spectrum so I knew if there were any mistakes that I would be in trouble. Very little room for any corrective procedures. My mother-in-law had PRK about 10 years ago and had a very rough time.
I finally decided to go ahead and have it done. Total cost was $4300. $4200 for the surgery and $100 in medication I had to purchase. The day of the surgery they did another workup to ensure nothing had changed from three days before, when they did the previous workup. Another commenter in the thread mentioned the suction on your eyes. Yes, they put a suction device on each eye to hold it still while a laser cuts a flap on the eye. One of mine did not seal properly and had to be re-done. This left a "bruise" on my left eye for 2-3 weeks. Once the flap is cut, I was moved over to the main laser and each eye was done. Total time was less than 20 minutes.
My regular vision has been 20/20 since the day after the surgery. I think it has improved somewhat in the months following surgery. I have two 27" 2560x1440 monitors on my desk and I can read text more easily now than I could with glasses or contacts. Night vision is every bit as good. One area they have improved in is the size of the flap the gets cuts. If the edges of the flap are not larger than your maximum pupil dilation, then you end up with permanent halos at night. I have had no halos from day one. The laser she used has the largest treatment size of any certified by the FDA.
Due to how recent my treatment was, I have no comment on long term effects. I do know that I will require reading glasses at some point. Probably between mid forties to fifty. This is a fact of aging. Were I to be wearing my regular glass I would need bifocals. I will need reading glasses, but they are cheap; unlike my regular glasses or bi-focal glasses.
Would I do it again? Absolutely. I live in the southern US and it gets hot. In the summer just a few minutes outside would cause sweating that made glasses a pain. If it were raining and I had to walk from car to a store, I might have to dry my glasses just to be able to see well. I can see from the minute I wake up until I go to bed. Glasses/contacts were not too much of a hassle, but freeing myself from the time and aggravation of them was well worth it. The fact that I can see slightly better is a bonus.
Thank you,
James
Have you read the Moderator Guidelines
Everything was great and I was 20/20 to 20/30 for years. Had to start wearing glasses again from 30 to 35, when I again looked into corrective surgery. After that long, most will not do LASIK again, was told it is like cutting into old scar tissue. Also, when they were taking corneal measurements and comparing it to the first surgery, the comment I heard was "well that does not make sense" but "it is what it is". The old measurement minus what was removed during LASIK did not equal the new number, it was too low. Explanation: Corneas thickened resulting in nearsightedness again. I have never been able to find any information or studies about such a phenomenon.
Had PRK done at 35, very very painful recovery period on the next day which was earlier than expected. The examining doctor said she had never seen an epithelium heal quite that fast. But again good results in the end. I was slightly farsighted in one eye for some time during the healing process.
Wearing a very slight eyeglass prescription again at 38, although I could still pass the last driver's license eye exam. Am curious what my corneal measurements are again. But I am essentially done with laser surgeries unless something completely new and different comes out.
My optical insurance covers about $325 for a years supplies of contacts or glasses, and the requisite exam, They don't cover any type of corrective eye surgery. This benefit costs me $24/year which is the combined price for optical/dental coverage.
$24 for contact lens, or $4000 for the average cost for both eyes. While I'd love to not have to wear glasses or contacts, $3952 is a chunk of change with a really long ROI. Even if I split it up one eye across two years so that I can use a flex spending account, that still a lot.
Ironically, there total cost of having me as an employee could be less presuming I stuck around as an employee long enough. But the bean counters don't see it that way. They didn't see it that way either for paying $13k worth of diabetes medicine and supplies every year or a $20k bariatric surgery once.
Having done the procedure, the creepy factor is the only negative. It is legitimately terrifying, but not painful.
The issue is that eye surgery is complex. The tech manages the complexity but on some level it weakens the lens, Etc.
A eye surgeon friend/relation suggested that the "next" version of the technology is always better.. and in the past once you had had the surgery you were precluded from the newest revision. That may have changed. His advice was not to get the surgery unless you need it medically or understand that you maybe limiting your ability to get the surgery later in your life when you might need it.
http://www.hawknest.com/
The risk vs reward isn't good enough. I can easily go the rest of my life with glasses/contacts, but gamble on my eyes... hell no. I've played enough video games to know that 0.01% or whatever the odds do happen eventually.
I can't have any kind of surgery that involves cutting a flap in the cornea since my eyeballs still need to be shockproof, there are types that don't require this though. Still a bit worried about the aura/halo effect. And the cost is not insignificant.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I write software for a living. And yes, we all test our code, unit tests, regression test, automated testing, QA departments. And we still have bugs in our code. And you want to shine a computer controlled laser into my eye? PS: a friend of mine had it done about a decade ago. We've lost touch so I can't say how it worked out for him, but I do recall him sketching out on a bar napkin the areas that needed improvement. He was going in for a touch up since the doctor's office called and said the new software was in. No thanks...
I did it like 8 years ago. And I'm still happy that I did it..... The only few disadvantages are that I was able to see very sharp at around 5 cm, now I can't anymore. My fingers need to be at least 10 cm away to see them clearly. I also don't like the bugs flying in my eyes when I'm riding my bike.... But not having to search every morning where I left my glasses, or cleaning my glasses every time it rains, or taking in and out of lenses everyday, made my life a lot more bearable.
Sounds like someone made some poor decisions with their life.
I don't see the problem, I already have 2 kids...
I had Lasik back in 1999 in my late 20s. Best money I ever spent. Wore glasses for 17 years prior to the surgery. Pre-surgery my vision was about 4 diopters in each eye with some mild astigmatism in one eye. My correct vision remains better than 20/20 15 years later. It's not for everyone and it doesn't mean I eventually won't need glasses again but I'm very glad I got it done. I've never benefited more from anything I've ever bought.
I did have some mild haloing at night for about 2-3 years afterwards but it went away. Took me about 6 months to stop reflexively trying to push my glasses back up my nose even though they weren't there anymore. Eyes were a little dry for a few weeks afterwards but nothing serious. They tell you to keep your eyes closed for a day or so afterwards and they mean it so follow the post operative procedures carefully.
It's not for everyone. Statistically the outcomes are very positive if you are a candidate but there is some risk as with any surgery. If you are comfortable wearing glasses and don't need improved vision then I'd say don't worry about it. I play a lot of sports and it helped a lot for me but some people would benefit less.
10 years ago I would have gotten 20/10. 10 years later, and presbyopia has set in. At least now, I can pull up my near-sighted glasses to read up close. In another 10, I will need bifocals. It's too late for me to get lasik, as it is for most people 40+.
your eyes mostly don't change between 25 en 40, probably 50, I don't have any idea. But my eyes stayed the same from around that time until now. And I'm still happy with the operation. Less than a decade is of course too bad. Only advantage I see, is that if you had -4 or more, that you can subtract it from your new glasses. So having -1 after 5 years, would probably have been -5 without the operation. If you had -1 or -2, I don't think I would have ever done that operation...
I have minor strabismus, one eye points about 10-15 degrees offline.
I'm told it's barely noticeable with glasses on, but very evident when I have them off. Plus, I've lived all my life with glasses and I'm 46....so nah, not worth the bother/risk.
If I was 20 and didn't have this vanity thing? I'd do it in a heartbeat.
-Styopa
I haven't done it because I have severe myopia and all my ophthalmologists recommended that LASIK is not a good idea because it would thin my cornea too much. They have told me surgeons will do it at my level but if it were their eyes they wouldn't risk it. So, the only option for me is intraocular lens which I've been told costs $5,000 per eye and I'd rather use contact lenses to correct my vision to 20:20 than shell out $10,000. If I could do LASIK I'd sign up tomorrow.
Maybe it's just silly, but I'm really scared of someone shooting a laser into my eye. I don't want to be that 0.01% of cases that has something horrible happen.
It's not silly, just very unlikely. I've had the surgery and I won't kid you that the idea of someone cutting my eye still makes me a bit squeamish even today. That said I still consider my lasik procedure to be the best money I've ever spent. One of the partners in our company had it too and feels similarly.
As with any surgery it is 100% appropriate to be cautious and ask a lot of questions. If you still are uncomfortable with the idea it's ok not to get the surgery. I'm fairly active and it helps with sports I play but if you aren't bothered by glasses and they don't cause you problems then there is no need to get the procedure.
I had one of the all-laser ("Intralase SBK") approaches done about 4 years ago and the results were great! My vision was only about -2 in each eye, but the surgery put me to marginally better than 20/20.
The most annoying part was not being able to wear contacts for the week leading up to the surgery so my eyes could go back to their natural shape but the surgery was neat (only took 3 minutes) and I could see perfectly, as soon as I sat up from the chair (although my eyes had a "fog" effect for a few hours).
When doing the initial consultations, I expressed concern over night vision (since I am usually out at night) but they said that most of the issues related to that were pre-existing and were only noticeable due to the increased resolving power of their eyes, post-surgery. Personally, I haven't noticed a problem and things like lights, when out at night, seem much sharper (I could tell the first time I tried to get on a bus, after the surgery, and realized I could clearly make out the route name and number from MUCH further away than usual).
I highly recommend it.
I went through the same when I changed from glasses to contacts. I’d been wearing glasses for probably 5-6 years at that point. It did take getting used to, but the improvement in vision was more than worth it for me. It was probably the better part of a year before I dropped the nervous habit of pushing my (nonexistent) glasses back up my nose when I was thinking.
As for not going the laser route? Cost, possibility of severe complications resulting in blindness are higher than those of contacts, and the idea of sharks (assuming that’s where they got the lasers?) holding me down and cutting on my eyeball when I’m merely doped up a little as opposed to completely zonked? I’ll pass..
I can get glasses that last for 5+ years for a couple hundred dollars, vs. lots more for surgery with its inherent risks. My glasses are generally only annoying when I work outside & get sweaty.
Cost isn't really a meaningful comparison here. I wore glasses for 17 years before having lasik. Best money I ever spent but I didn't do it because of the cost and I would have paid double or more of what I did especially in hindsight. I did it for quality of life. Having to wear glasses is an annoying, albeit usually minor handicap. I'm very glad to not have to wear them anymore. This may not describe you of course and that is ok too.
Here's one reason to be afraid of laser eye surgery:
http://eyemaxdifference.com/ni... "The NIDEK laser system has been specifically designed to simplify use of the laser for the surgeon and technicians.
...
Features of the new Windows®-based graphic user interface offer the ultimate combination of greater convenience and significant time savings."
Just remember that the people who had the surgery and went blind probably aren't reading or posting on /. anymore.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
I'd just as rather have good night vision with glasses at this stage.
That's fine but lasik doesn't necessarily hurt your night vision. I had good night vision both before and after the procedure. Some have different results but most people have night vision pretty similar to what they had afterwards post recovery. I had a bit of haloing for about 2 years afterwards but it went away.
Lasik does not cure the need most people have as they get older for reading glasses. (Called presbyopia - caused by a hardening of the lenses) Chances are I'll need reading glasses someday but after wearing glasses for 17 years I couldn't be more glad to be rid of them.
I normally run around 75 orienteering competitions every year, 15-20 of them during late fall/winter/early spring when we have very little daylight here in Norway.
This means that those races are all at night, using a LED headlamp to read the map and to the see the ground in front of me. Since I got old enough for presbyopia I have been forced to use either bifocal glasses or a single contact lens: The glasses work OK under dry daytime conditions, but with any kind of moisture in the air they quickly become useless. The single contact means that I can only see the map with my right eye and the terrain only with the left, while distance perception suffers.
When I asked about lasik I was told that with my need for maximum night vision I would probably be very bothered by halos/diffraction spikes, the alternative is to do a multi-focal lens replacement surgery:
This uses a lens with two or three focal points, i.e. distance/reading. Most people can learn to disregard the out of focus image and only "see" the sharp version, but since more than half the light is lost night vision suffers significantly.
I'm still hoping they will be able to develop a real elastic replacement lens, i.e. something that allows me to regain the childhood capability to focus anywhere from the tip of my nose to infinity, in the meantime I'll try to make do without surgery.
Terje
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"
I'm moderately nearsighted, enough that I legally need glasses to drive. I blame books - I read constantly as a child, so my eyes never needed to focus far away.
Nowadays, I've traded the books in for computers, which I use upward of 10 hours a day. At first, that made my eyesight worse. But once I started taking off my glasses for extended computer use, my eyes actually started improving. I've actually gone back to an old, weaker prescription for my glasses.
Additional note: opticians don't even wear contacts, just glasses!
There might be a reason?
I apologize for the lack of a signature.
A common (generally mild) side effect is dry eyes, especially recently after the surgery, but often for longer time periods as well. I have enough issues with dry eyes due to allergy/hayfever, so I'd really hate to aggravate the situation. Of course, I'm lucky enough to only need glasses for driving in the later hours, so I'm not wearing them constantly anyhow.
The second would be that it would screw up my near-vision for reading in the future, meaning I'd need reading glasses (probably more often than I need driving glasses). One solution would be to only laze one eye , but that takes longer to adjust too and I'm not sure it's worth it.
iLASIK is done with all lasers, one to make the flap that was previously done by blade, and the usual LASIK after that. Fewer reported complications than with the older blade style. At my six month checkup I was seeing 20/10 from my left eye and 20/15 from my right. I'm 48 and previously wore progressive lenses. They adjusted my right for a closer focal distance.
It all just works, I love it.
Trolling is a art,
I am VERY nearsighted, and if I want to do close-up work, like taking a laptop apart, or welding something intricate, I can't see close with my contacts in or glasses on. That means if I got the surgery, I wouldn't have the luxury of just taking my glasses/contacts off to see very close up.
Same here. I'd jump at the chance to get LASIK if the technology was there, and I had the money.
I had mine done around 2000, and at -10.25/-9.75 was on the limits of what could be achieved back then. The cost did mean I didn't have to wear glasses, so represented good value for money. My eyes do have a faint ghost image in low light conditions, which means whilst I can drive at night, I do have to make sure I'm alert. As I'm now 50, I'm investigating whether I can have a second minor correction.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
That's what you'll have to do if you have LASIK. If you don't have LASIK, you'll avoid the need for reading glasses or push it back by many years. That's kind of the point.
rage, rage against the dying of the light
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?
Especially for those of us who aren't blind without them, what's wrong with putting a pair of glasses on for certain tasks?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
It's called monovision. Outdoors I currently wear only one contact lens (right eye). I recommend to give it a try for a while. It does have advantages; mainly if my right eye gets blocked by something things far away are blurry (as expected). I am 47.
Perl Programmer for hire
I'm up around retirement age. My eyes don't chage focus much at all. So I have to swap lenses to go from distance to close-up vision. (Yes I could use some kind of bi/tri/progressive-focal lenses. But at the moment swapping is adequate for me.)
Until they find a way to correct presbyopia (and they don't see to be even researching it), I'd still have to don/remove glasses anyhow. With my extreme astigmatism, extreme nearsightedness, and substantial age, I'm not a good candidate for lasic and stand a substantial chance of visual artifacts from it. I'm also a target shooter, so my glasses double as eye protection.
Given all this, the potential benefits for me would be small and the risks and cost oughtweigh them.
But if they ever find a way to fix presbyopia the equation could change substantially.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
plain and simple. Good eyesight is essential to my career. I'm a very visually oriented person. Not to minimize the loss of any other faculties but, for me, losing my eyesight would be the most difficult to deal with. Any surgery has risk. Some more than others but risk is always present. For me, it's just not worth the risk (however small) that I might end up with some sort of permanent damage to my eyes. Now, if I needed some sort of surgery to save my vision then that's another story entirely. But to do it for vanity and convenience? No thanks.
I've been wearing glasses since I was a child. Tried contacts and decided very quickly that I'd rather use glasses. I see really well with my glasses (both near and far) and I'm used to wearing them.
Would it improve my looks if I got Lasik? Yeah, maybe, but it's not a motivating factor for me. A few people have told me that I look good with my glasses. I kinda like them. So I'll keep using them.
DIY
I had been considering getting LASIK for years but kept putting it off out of fear of damaging my sight, or the idea that technology would improve in the future and make the outcomes better/less risky. About two years ago though I started getting terrible headaches due to Temporomandibular joint dysfunction, caused by my glasses. Basically, the feel of my glasses on my face was causing me to contract my facial muscles so much that it was giving me severe headaches and sometimes even a jaw so sore I could not open my mouth. I tried contacts several times over the years but none of the brands worked for me - they were too dry, too irritating, and I was unable to focus on computer screens with them for some reason (necessitating needing contacts + reading glasses!).
So finally in spring 2013 I finally got the nerve (and HSA funds saved up) to get LASIK done. I went to a highly reputable doctor, whom has performed more procedures than anyone else in the country (including several famous actors and athletes). They told me going in that no surgery is perfect and to have realistic expectations. I was an excellent candidate, I had nice thick corneas and moderate myopia and astigmatism. The only problems were my eyes were a little on the dry side and my pupils dilate greater than the treated area. I went ahead with the surgery anyway, once I had the nerve to go through with it I was extremely excited and eager to have it done and be able to enjoy the rest of my youth without needing glasses.
My results came out very good, but not perfect. A friend of mine whom had LASIK just before myself was disappointed because they under corrected her. Knowing this, I asked the doc to not under correct, I wanted the full correction. I ended up getting about 20/15 in both eyes, so I was very happy. I had bad halos and starbursts, which made me somewhat worried. However, those aberrations very gradually went away. It was so gradual that I hardly even noticed that I could no longer see them - but it took over a year. I do have drier eyes even now, so I need to use eye drops once a day or every other day. But they are not irritated or uncomfortable, they just get kind of sticky over a couple days which makes my vision less sharp. The only other downside was my nightvision is kind of...weird. When my pupil dilates greater than the treated area, I see hard to describe aberrations - mainly in point light sources in a dark area that end up having a sort of blur or ghost around them.
Over all, I'm very happy with my results and glad I took the plunge. I don't even remember what it was like to have glasses any more and I love no longer being reliant on them. Especially now since the Oculus Rift is coming out very soon!
My myopia is increasing by about 0.25 diopters every two years. Even if had my eyesight surgically corrected, I'd be wearing glasses again in a few years and have all the possible drawbacks of the surgery.
If it's not necessary, then don't do it! Any time a bodily tissue or organ that undergoes any type of surgery, it will never be the same again. 20 years ago a friend in FL underwent Lasik surgery. She acquired an infection in one eye and treated her with antibiotics without success. When the doctors realized she had a fungal infection inside the eye, it was too late to save her vision. In April 2013, I experienced 4 retinal detachments at the age of 45 in the left eye requiring 3 surgeries: laser surgery; vitrectomy and laser surgery; vitrectomy and laser surgery with scleral buckle. In October 2013 I went against medical advice and had the scleral buckle removed because I couldn't tolerate the device in my eye. In April 2014, I had cataract surgery because the previous surgeries were so traumatic to the eye, causing a cataract. Over $60,000 later I now have about 90% vision in the left eye. Cause of the retinal detachment: normal aging with bad luck. Don't have elective surgery on your body if it's not medically necessary, you might regret it later.
There are numerous reasons for people needing glasses that can not currently be helped by laser eye surgery. It obviously works quite well for many other peoples' conditions.
As you age, you'll realize why they sell bifocals and how come people who never had glasses buy reading glasses when they get old.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
When you'll be 40+ you'll understand why it was better not doing that and using contacts :-)
I would like the surgery for two reasons... 1) Cheap $10 gas station sun glasses that I don't care if I lose. (As opposed to prescription sunglasses that cost a couple to a few hundred dollars). 2) Reading in bed, laying on your side. My vision is bad enough that reading with out glasses is a pain. I don't want the surgery for one reason... 1) Visual aberrations at night. I enjoy astro-photography, and also concert and event photography, and I would like to know that how I see things when I push the shutter button is pretty close to how they will turn out. If they could solve the visual aberrations , I'd do it in a heart beat.
I'm waiting for the 4D revision so I'll be able to see through time.
I don't need contacts or glasses, you insensitive cl...oh, wait.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
(1) worn glasses all my life. Don't even think about them anymore.
(2) I have dark rings under my eyes. They're very noticeable when I'm not wearing glasses; but not noticeable with my glasses.
(3) My eyes stopped changing in my 30's and then were static until my mid-40's whereupon things started to go downhill. My distance vision hasn't changed but my low-light vision and close-up vision have deteriorated. I have to wear bifocals now and turn lights on. My Optometrist assures me this is a normal aging thing.. If I had Lasik, I think I'd still have to wear glasses to read or work on cars; so what's the point?
Age related myopia is a fact of life. It affects your reading ability and pretty much everyone gets it. There is no trade off with Lasik that makes the age related issues set in quicker or last longer or be more severe. My wife had lasik in her mid-20's and still thinks it was the best money ever spent. At 40 she's got 20/15 vision and is just starting with age related issues but because she's starting at 20/15 it's going to be longer before she needs corrective lenses.
Age related eye changes happen either way, Lasik fixes your most important distance vision for the remainder of your life but you will still experience the need for reading glasses as an effect of aging.
I think it's completely irresponsible to suggest that just because you are older that the Lasik is less valuable because it's not, I've met 50 year olds that had the procedure and lost their full time glasses with bifocals in exchange for just bifocal reading glasses. Personally I'd rather wear glasses 20% of the time rather than full time along with being damn near blind without them. There is a tremendous difference between needing bifocals to read and being unable to drive a car or see the alarm clock in the morning without putting your glasses on.
I had it done almost 15 years ago and I had some complications. I live in Colorado over 10,000 feet and it's very dry up here. One of the things that I haven't seen mentioned is that the surgery can cause you to have dry eyes. In most environments that's not a problem but for me, one night my eyes got so dry that my eyelid stuck to my eye and it caused me to scratch my cornea when I opened my eyes in the morning which required several more weeks of healing. Plus, I had to get one eye redone so in the end it took over a year for my eyes to completely heal. Plus I had problems with night vision from halos. Fast forward to today and I just had to get a new pair of glasses for computer work and reading. After the surgery I also had problems reading low contrast, small text. Particularly text on small molded plastic parts. If I had known all that I had to go through I probably would have waited another couple of years for the next round of technology. But I still don't need glasses for day to day living and it sure is nice to not need to wear contacts for sports. My only caution would be if you live in a very low humidity area that there can be complications from that.
A buddy worked at an Opthomalogic research institute. Everyone wore glasses - no contacts, no surgeries.
I have 2 in-laws who are Opthamologists. Both wear glasses, contacts when business interests dictate no glasses (some meetings they don't want people with glasses). Neither was enthusiastic about recommending the process for me. They'd do it, if I wanted, but it wasn't something coming from them.
I believe there is an incompatibility with LASIC and the new implants for cataracts surgery.
I have a friend who had LASIC, one eye near focus, one eye far focus. He can't do 3D gaming that well as one eye really isn't in focus. His night vision is also pretty bad. Perhaps modern LASIC is better, but it was supposed to be awesome then, too. There are other stories from the old days - one guy ended up with double vision in one eye because they were cut wrong.
It's a surgery on a perfectly healthy organ. There's always risks. The impact of wearing glasses/contacts on my life has been pretty minimal. I like being able to see at night (with glasses, admittedly) and it's not something I'm really interested in risking. I don't get it. Of course, I'd never have my ears bobbed or my nose slimmed down either, and, for me, I look at LASIC in a similar vein.
Also the fact that it won't prevent future changes to vision. I'm thirty now, and my vision still continues to slowly get worse. I fear I'd be paying for a 5 year reprieve from glasses and then be back to wearing them with side effects I also have to live with for the rest of my life.
The place that I went to (in Toronto, Canada) has a lifetime warranty for touch ups if you drop below a certain threshold. The main proviso is that you have to go to them for regular check-ups every two years so they can monitor.
I got PRK, so the recovery period was longer than LASIK (about six months to get to 100%), but I don't have a "flap", and so any future procedures won't be as big of a deal.
I'm 20/20 in my right eye, and just off from 20/20 in my left. No noticeable night vision effects after 1.5 years. I'm currently 36 years old.
I can relate. I had Lasik done because I was sick of glasses, and there was no way I could ever put contacts in my eyes. The surgeon described me as having a "very aggresive blink reflex" and they had to pretty much pin me down to do the surgery. I'll admit, the surgery was probably the most miserable time of my life, but it doesn't last long, and it was so worth it in the end. (and yes, the eye drops needed for about a week afterwards were also extremely difficult for me, but I still don't regret the surgery even the least little bit.)
vision changes throughout life, but for the most part people's vision pretty much stabilizes when they are in their early 20s, and stays that way until their 50s, at that point it's a different problem though, unlike in your younger years when your eyes are changing, the problem when you get older is that your eyes don't change as much making re-focusing more difficult. End result is that instead of needing one prescription, you end up needing two (bi-focals). I had my Lasik done at about age 25, and at age 35 my vision is still 20/15 (same as it was the week after the surgery) Eventually I'll probably need reading glasses, but there's a good chance I'll avoid needing bi-focals.
As for dry eye... I do wish someone had mentioned that before the surgery, I never saw anything at all about that in all the research I did (and I did quite a bit) but I will say that post-surgery my eyes are much drier than they were before the surgery. I won't really say it's an issue, I just wish I had known ahead of time. (that said, I would still have done it again in a heartbeat, best decision I ever made!)
Thats' not my understanding at all. my understanding is that when you get old your vision doesn't so much "change" as become less "elastic", you loose the ability to easily re-focus. The end result is that you no longer need just one prescription, but two (bi-focals) Lasik can't fix that, but it can set one of the two, so that you only need reading glasses instead of bi-focals.
You're lucky, then. Most people who are myopic enough to require glasses drift half a diopeter or so over a few years, surgery or no surgery. Even within the last few years, Lasik can give you distortions in the visual field that no glasses can fix; my mother has them and it makes reading difficult. That's worse than being near/farsighted.
My mom had diabetic retinopathy laser surgery. After having the lenses removed the old fashioned way years before that (scalpel, while awake). There are also effects noted for divers, so between the fears from my mom's surgeries, the potential side effects to diving, and the probable changes as my eyes age even more, it just isn't worth it.
Hated every moment of it, one of the most miserable experiences of my life. And worth every moment.
I actually got my lasik done from the same surgeon that did my opthamologist... so I felt fairly confident (I did do quite a bit of my own research too, but when I asked my opthamologist and they gave me the name that did theirs I'll say it carried some weight)
For this reason the Canadian Army used to insist on PRK over Lasik, the difference is that in Lasik they open a flap in your eye, and then re-seal it. in PRK they cut the flap off and let it re-grow. That said, I believe with more experience that they've changed the rules to allow both now.
There is a risk of dislodging the flap after Lasik, though the risk goes away with time (I'm not sure how much time?) Though I don't think G-forces alone are enough (at least not survivable ones) they were worried about direct trauma to the eye.
Thats' not my understanding at all. my understanding is that when you get old your vision doesn't so much "change" as become less "elastic", you loose the ability to easily re-focus.
That much is true, but myopic individuals are naturally focused at nearer range. It's not uncommon for presybobia--or at least significant enough to need reading glasses--to be delayed past age 50 in people with myopia (especially those with little or no astigmatism), or even avoided altogether. Well, that's not entirely correct: if you're wearing your contacts or glasses, you'll need to take them off to see at close range during that interim period.
http://www.aoa.org/documents/o...
"Due to lens effectivity, patients who wear spectacle corrections for myopia experience presbyopia later than those with emmetropia or hyperopia. Patients with myopia typically require less powerful bifocal additions than same-age patients who wear spectacle corrections for hyperopia."
rage, rage against the dying of the light
Age related myopia is a fact of life. It affects your reading ability and pretty much everyone gets it.
You're completely wrong here:
1. Myopia affects your ability to see at a distance, it does not affect your reading ability. Most people do not get it; it typically develops until age 20-25 in those who do get it. It's the reason for most glasses and contacts in people under age 40. LASIK is most commonly used as a correction for those with myopia.
2. Presbyopia is the age-related age decline that most people get; it affects your ability to focus, which is why many old people need reading glasses or bifocals. It tends to start sometime after age 40 and progress.
3. People with myopia absolutely tend to have much-delayed onset of significant presbyopia, less severe cases, and sometimes avoid it entirely; LASIK eliminates those delays.
See, e.g., the American Optometric Association's Care of the Patient with Presbyopia:
http://www.aoa.org/documents/o...
Patients with uncorrected or undercorrected myopia are less likely to experience difficulty with near tasks... Due to lens effectivity, patients who wear spectacle
corrections for myopia experience presbyopia later than those with emmetropia or hyperopia. Patients with myopia typically require less powerful bifocal additions than same-age patients who wear spectacle corrections for hyperopia.
You don't eveb need to deep-dive into the AOA to find this out, either; even Wikipedia says "Many people with myopia (near-sightedness) can read comfortably without eyeglasses or contact lenses even after age 40. However, their myopia does not disappear and the long-distance visual challenges remain. Myopes considering refractive surgery are advised that surgically correcting their nearsightedness may be a disadvantage after age 40, when the eyes become presbyopic and lose their ability to accommodate or change focus, because they will then need to use glasses for reading. Myopes with astigmatism find near vision better, though not perfect, without glasses or contact lenses when presbyopia sets in, but the more astigmatism, the poorer their uncorrected near vision". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
rage, rage against the dying of the light
But my secret identity relies on wearing glasses.
Myopia is the effect of having an eyeball out-of-round. Astigmatism is the result of aberrations in the cornea. Why cut up the cornea to fix myopia? You got lucky with 20/15; most do not, and many have aberrations. No thanks.
If/when myopia-corrective lens implants give full vision range (and, incidentally, also correct presbyopia), I'll be down to the clinic to have it done. Until then, I have 20/15, 20/20 and astigmatism correction with contacts and no side effects.
Halos are caused by the correction area being smaller that the dilated pupil size, has nothing to do with the type of LASIK.
More info: http://www.usaeyes.org/lasik/f...
The most common post LASIK problem is actually dry eyes, 50% of patients.
It is certainly not a perfected surgery IMHO.
AND a large difference in acuity between my right and left eyes I find your idea puzzling at best. The near total lack of good depth-perception is profoundly disturbing. While I can certainly carry out all normal everyday activities I regularly encounter difficulties, especially in low-light and low-contrast situations. I'm ENTIRELY disbarred from any attempt to participate in any sport which requires any sort of hand-eye coordination as well, though I long ago resigned myself to that.
I'd be very glad if my divergence could be corrected. I'd be very glad if the difference in visual acuity between my two eyes could be decreased as well, as it is both confusing and stressful. I've also found that even the best opthalmologists have trouble properly prescribing for me, so I go through cycles of getting new glasses, making them redo one lens, then the other lens, etc. Its a real PITA to say the least.
I don't know if modern laser surgery is something I should consider, but it does sound tempting just to get the right eye up to similar to the left one.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
I get bad allergies and my eyes are always itchy. I am near sighted and rarely see far. I wear eye glasses when I have too. I also can't see 3D.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
As a software engineer, I've met too many other software engineers to trust software with something that is largely optional. If they screw up my eyes, I go blind and can't make a living. The alternative is that I wear glasses, which I don't view as tremendously inconvenient. Given inconvenience vs. catastrophic failure cases, I'd rather deal with the inconvenience.
Similarly, I don't like ABS or traction control on cars.
I heard Tiger Woods had LASIK done around 15 years ago, and since then he's had to have 3 follow up procedures since his vision keeps gradually getting worse. What happens when there isn't any tissue left since you've had the procedure done so many times? Do you just have to wear glasses, or are the consequences much worse than that?
Laser surgery gives, in general, very good fixed correction. It is excellent for people under 45 with vision that needs correction. There are occasional failures, yes, but they are quite rare.
But what about later in life (hello, 50) when your lens hardens and you can't focus it any more? Laser surgery will achieve nothing. You are still stuck with reading glasses.
Well, I had -7 vision and was mightily sick of being blind without glasses, found contacts a drag, and it's all damned expensive. My vision with my (very expensive) glasses was excellent, with contacts acceptable, but it was all annoying.
So I got lens replacement surgery. It's the same operation as for cataracts, but voluntary. And expensive (AUD 10,000). The replacement lenses are not focusable, so I got lenses with three focus points - close (reading), medium (screen, and distance. A Zeiss trifocal implantable lens.
The operation was quick, but unpleasant (you are almost, but not quite unconscious - not nice). Recovery involved many, many drops for a few weeks gradually diminishing to none.
Result - daytime vision is excellent, both near and far. I can read, compute, play sports.
Night-time vision is not so good, you get some haloing and other artefacts. I can drive ok, but stargazing is not so great.
These lenses will not harden further so my vision should stay the same for the rest of my life, which is nice.
On the whole I am pleased. It's certainly a joy to go swimming without concern, see in the rain, and even water ski. Amazing after a life of really, really poor vision.
I researched the surgeons, checked the research, and balanced the results against the side effects and risks. In fact, the risk of actual permanent damage - ie blindness - are very low indeed. After all, they do these operations by the thousand in Africa (look up Fred Hollows) in what must be poorer conditions.
Laser surgery was not for me - that would indeed have corrected my main vision problem, shortsightedness, but I would have been unable to read or compute without reading glasses - and where's the fun in that?
It's amazing to wake up in the morning ... and be able to see.
"Cats like plain crisps"
PRK was what resulted in halos and starbursts. Early LASIK didn't have a large enough flap cut so in extreme darkness a pupil could dilate out past the corrected area. I don't think they cut as often now and instead use ablative procedures that remove material from the surface after first mapping the eye's surface. After the surgery you could have some dryness that can take some time to go away, use drops.
If you're prescription is stable I HIGHLY recommend the procedure. I went from 20:70 20:90 to 20:20 20:30 - I was legally blind without correction and my Dr laughed when I asked that. I got the surgery the January following the initial FDA approval in the United States. I was no longer able to wear contacts as my eyes had begun to starve for oxygen and the blind spots that glasses have nearly got me killed in traffic - literally. I went from losing my towel on the beach and not being able to read the alarm in the morning to being able to read an alarm across the bedroom - I could read that distant alarm 2 hours after surgery. I was terrified prior to the surgery, a near miss driving with glasses solved that damn quick.
When my surgery was done procedures were cruder, the FDA limited what they could do (to my detriment), and they didn't know about the pupil dilation yet. I wouldn't trade it back for the world! The difference this made in my life has been incredible. I've suffered no side effects other than some dryness which can cause Chelazians in my eye lids if I'm not careful. My vision remains pretty good, I'll need reading glasses before too long I suspect. I could have a tune up done to sharpen things but considering what I lived with before I'm not sweating it. My night vision remains good but age has taken its toll in that dept, I don't mind as it beats being blind.
I should admit, I've run into one or two people with horror stories and I'd never do mono vision unless I never had stereo vision to begin with (I know someone like that). The number of success stories I've encountered is far far higher. It's still surgery, not to be taken lightly, but its a damned miracle for some of us...
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About 15 years ago I HAD to have Lasik. My prescription was so heavy at 7.75+1.75 on my worse eye and 7.25+1( I think?) on my good eye, that my work in autocad was suffering. Working in the Civil engineering field, I had a black background with Blue for water lines, brown for sewer, white for street center lines & property lines, etc on screen. My glasses were so thick that a white line would break up into its RGB components. A vertical line would appear to me as three too close water/power/sewer lines! I had the older physical blade type lasik. Now my vision is 20/35 but I have a LARGE number of halos, star bursts and slight double vision from headlines on cars, the stars, the moon, ect. I don't regret it as I live in Las Vegas, and there is way too much light pollution to make it viable to star gaze. I don't plan on having it touched up as I am a HEAVY reader and when I get older I want the monovision option open to me, and I will go back to glasses for the 40-60's age in my life. My doc said that due to the thickness of my corneas, I can only get 2 vision fixes until it is too thin to work on.
Tell that to someone who has been through undiagnosed glaucoma or has suffered a separated retina. What a dumbass...
Where are you that 20/90 is legally blind? That's nothing.
In my state it's 20/200. You need glasses past 20/40 if you want to drive, though.
Only partially true though, what they ignore is that those same people need glasses for distance. So it's a choice of needing glasses for reading, or for distance, or for both. Not needing glasses isn't really the option there.
With Lasik you'd need your reading glasses, without you'd need either distance glasses, or bi-focals, depending.
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.
I got the bladed kind 20 years ago. Best couple grand I ever spent, even with street light "halos". If you are worried about the doc screwing it up, just get one eye done, then get the other later. It'll cost more that way, but at least you can still be king in the land of the blind if it goes wrong.
PRK also has a much higher incidence of starbursts and halos. In my case I was to,d that if I were to have that done I'd never be able to drive again at night. My case was pretty extreme but its very much a side effect of PRK in even milder corrections.
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
Thanks for that. Now, what's your mother's maiden name?
I like it because I can get (and did get) free prescription sunglasses from my private health insurance (here in Australia I have one with cover for Optical). Laser surgery may be able to correct the vision but it doesn't do a thing about the high price of a pair of sunnies with sun protection as good as the sun protection in my nice pair of prescription sunnies :)
my wife had laser retina repairs a few years back, and after hearing the description of the procedure, I related that had I been sitting in the chair, there would then be me-shaped cartoon-like hole in the exam room wall. The mere description of LASIK and PRK is enough to make me lightheaded. It's just an eye thing. Pain I can take. $4,000 will buy me 20 pairs of glasses, and I ain't gonna live long enough to go through 20 pairs of glasses.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
I naturally have one 20-20 eye and one 20-200 eye (corrected with a single contact to 20-15), and I'm now 45 years old. When I asked about laser eye surgery maybe 10 years ago, my eye doctor said "NO. Don't do it. In a few years you'll appreciate that eye that's currently near-sighted." And I do. As I am slowly creeping up on the "arms too short" syndrome, I can still see closer with my nearsighted eye.
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
Yep, PRK fanboy here. Best thing ever.
My first Lasik was done back when the procedure was considered "experimental". Then later I had it done again on the same eye. Before I laid down on the table, they were testing the laser on something like a block of wood with copper mesh. Sparks were flying, IIRC.
Having studied the Therac 25, I asked them if they ever had to reboot the machine. "All the time" they said. Yikes.
Sounds like my case. Increasing couldn't get wear contacts any more without problems, hated all of the problems of glasses, was scared of the surgery... and it was just nothing. Seriously, how can instantly improved vision not be at the top of your to-do list?
People said I was dumb, but I proved them.
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 :-(
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
PRK also has a much higher incidence of starbursts and halos
Yes, but you're overlooking an important detail -- in the early 2000s, an average PRK (or LASEK) patient went into surgery with significantly worse vision than an average Lasik patient. Until fairly recently, the maximum amount of correction the FDA allowed for PRK & LASEK was a diopter or two HIGHER than the limit imposed for Lasik... but the maximum-allowed diameter of the ablation zone was about 2mm LESS. The net result is that patients who were disqualified for Lasik were able to get PRK/LASEK, but their blend zone was fairly steep, and was often smaller in diameter than many patients' pupils in the dark. Meanwhile, patients with milder vision problems ended up getting Lasik by default, because it healed faster & was more heavily-advertised.
In other words, the PRK/LASEK patients who had the worst problems with halos are basically the ones who wouldn't have even been ALLOWED to get Lasik back in the early 2000s. I know, because I was one of 'em (1/2 diopter more astigmatism, and I would have been disqualified from PRK/LASEK too).
The good news is that the FDA finally raised the limits allowed for both maximum correction and ablation-zone diameter, and wavefront laser surgery can now fix most of the problems caused by the old FDA limits (enlarging the fully-corrected zone so it's as big as a darkness-accommodated pupil, and eliminating the halos in the process).
As you get older, the focus range of your eyes decreases such that they more or less become "stuck" at a certain focal length from your face. Laser surgery will generally make the "stuck" range or point be further out, which could harm reading even if it improves distance vision.
The ideal "stuck" point probably depends on what you do the most. If you are at a computer screen often, then about 14 to 24 inches seems like it would be the ideal, although you couldn't see small things up close well.
My eyesight's focus is settling to around 10 inches away, which is shy of the ideal monitor range. Is surgery worth that extra 8 inches?
The bottom line is that age is a bitch and laser surgery forces you to make tradeoffs as old eyes will only have one ideal focus with or without. Choose the red distance or the blue distance, but not both.
Table-ized A.I.
Here are tons of smart people, I don't see anybody talking about training eyes - recovering without surgery. Of course not always it is possible, but I know that I it is possible to get very good results without altering your body irreversible. Everybody seems to be lazy nowdays and it takes more than 15 minutes once, you have to do your eye training for 30 min daily.
So just to give the scoop on modern PRK for contrast, While many have mentioned, PRK is an older tech, it's not like it's static and stopped in time. Just like LASIK, it has improved over time and is a much different process than in the 90's. Early PRK systems imaged your eye for updates in the dozens or hundreds of times a second, the newer ones refresh thousands of times a second and are substantially more accurate, yadda yadda. I went and had all the various scans done, including the 3d imaging, and they determined that the only process they would recommend for me was PRK, and due to my cornea thickness they would not recommend LASIK. so I went ahead with it. I had PRK eye surgery in 2010. The experience was rather amazing, they laid me down on a table, put me in some headgear so I wouldn't move around, washed my eye with a variety of drops, and used some clamp to keep my eye open. then they said they were calibrating the machine again, some sounds happpened and it was under a minute, and then they said OK, time to do the other eye. I thought they meant they were going to prep my other eye, and the surgery was yet to come.... no... they had actually did all they needed to do in under a minute per eye. All told, I was out of the office in under 30 minutes, about 12 of those were signing forms. For me, even the clamps to hold my eyelid open weren't a huge burden, the only thing that actually annoyed the heck out of me is that they had a bright surgical lamp pointed at my face and I wasn't able to blink, which is a somewhat un-natural feeling. But to only have to do that for 10-15m, and have many years of amazing vision, I'd gladly do it again. and yes, the downside of PRK is that unlike lasik, you don't have 20/20 vision near immediately. Your eyes actually get worse as they heal, and then they get better after a week or two. I actually had PRK done right after finishing my exams at university, and remember a really weird time of when I was trying to do things everyday and I simply couldn't... I couldn't read a computer screen or book at any distance whatsoever for that first week, I was so afraid that maybe the doctor got it wrong, that I'd never be able to see anything properly again, and my entire career life would be ruined. I remember a really hellish day during that time, getting someone to drive me to university and needing to get some transcripts, and I more or less had to navigate the campus by memory and squinting at vague shapes... I had to take her word for it that she gave me my transcript and not someone else's. having worn glasses for nearly all my life, it was like someone had broken the only pair of glasses that would ever work for you, and there was no hope. ... and then it got better after a week or so. And after the initial healing process, I've lived the last 4 years with no side effects, not even dry eyes, no halos or night vision loss, and it's been a dream. Yes, at some point, I'll need reading glasses, but being able to have 20/20 vision for even some amount of time, and fixing my astigmatism, that's just amazing beyond belief.
If you're in your 20's, and you have this option available to you, don't hesitate.
I avoid voluntary surgery of all kinds.
If you get Lasik, the structural integrity of your cornea will never be the same as it was. One impact of a branch on your eye, or a tag from your jacket flicking you in the eye, could dislodge the corneal flap... and trust me, that's an injury you don't want to have.
I opted for PRK instead of Lasik for the following three reasons: (1) there's no flap with PRK, so no loss of structural integrity; (2) PRK reportedly causes fewer problems with dry eyes (because you're not severing the nerves within the cornea, just cutting off the nerve endings); and (3) PRK removes less of the cornea than Lasik, making a later "touch up" operation more of an option.
Recovery from PRK was brutal -- for two weeks you can't see anything ("I see men as trees, walking") and it feels like someone has poked both your eyes with their thumbs. Five years later I still have frequent issues with dry eyes -- primarily, I often can't really open my eyes when I wake up until I have put drops in, they're very painful otherwise. Getting salt from the Dead Sea in my eyes recently was excruciatingly painful -- more so than for normal people. I don't have halos at night, but if my eyes are dry I get some glare. Would I do it again? I think so -- life without glasses is awesome, and my vision is better than 20/20 now. I can live life without glasses for the next 10 years, then only need them while reading once presybyopia sets in. But the dry eyes almost make me say no, maybe it wasn't worth it. I go back and forth on this. And I miss the style factor of wearing glasses, to be honest.
Oh, and the reason I finally got PRK was because I realized PRK cost the same amount as my Canon EOS 5D Mark II, and I valued seeing things with my eyes more than through a camera lens. I sold the camera and got PRK.
I think what you're looking for is something like a crystalens. It's a lens they use for cataract surgery. they embed four "feet" into the eye muscles so when the eye muscles contract, the lens warps. This allows some refocusing.
I believe the 4D revision has been available since the 50's and 60's... it's called Lysergic Acid. It just doesn't last as long (usually) as the lesser D's.
My main reason is that I don't see the point. What is so wrong with glasses than I should want to pay thousands to have surgery on my eyes just to "free" myself from glasses? I've worn glasses for most of my life, can't say they bother me (and they do come in handy as others have noted as added physical protection at times!). Can't be doing with contact lenses though. Went for a trial, couldn't even keep my eye open for them to put the test lens in, so that was the end of that. Ugh, actually putting something on to the surface of one's eye? *shudder* Mind you, I can't have laser eye surgery even if I wanted it - a few years back I gave in and went for a test. The eye surgeon did the usual sight test stuff, measured my glasses to determine an initial prescription setting to test, figured out the final tested prescription was suitable for laser surgery, and started filling out the paperwork. "Umm, what about this double-cvision?" I asked, still sat in the chair with the eye test gear clamped to my head. "Huh? Oh." came the reply. Turns out that they can't do anything about double-vision, so even after surgery I'd still need glasses. Kinda destroyed his whole argument for having it, really! (I was a bit concerned that he had not spotted the glasses had double-vision correction in them when he was analysing them, too - wonder what else he might have missed had the surgery gone ahead?)
People should not be afraid of their governments - Governments should be afraid of their people.
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.
I'm no eyexpert..
Get dilated, what does that mean? Do they alter the way your eye dilates, like changing its settings?
Hivemind harvest in progress..
Thank you!!!
This is exactly what I've been waiting for, even if this first version only supplies a single diopter of focal plane adjustment:
Since orienteering maps are _very_ detailed I normally require +2 or more bifocal glasses in order to see all the fine detail clearly.
There is also a potential problem with the size of the lens: The visual opening is smaller than a natural or fixed replacement lens so the problem with night vision would still be there.
OTOH, this also means that the research is ongoing, I'm hoping for even better options in a few years. :-)
Terje
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"
Since I'm a PhD-student in ophthalmology and my subject touches this I'd like to add my two ören...
Fundamentally all refractive surgery creates two optical systems where there previously was one. I.e a small central area in the cornea with the new refraction and a periphery with the original refractive error. So in darkness the vision will be worse. This is not an elegant solution. Further, the incision to create the corneal flap permanently severs the (some) nerves going to the flap. This might lead to problems such as dry eyes etc. Annoyingly the cornea heals badly. Thus, the corneal flap is much weaker than the rest of the cornea, so in case of trauma it can break.
It is problematic that the standard measurement of visual function is (best corrected) visual acuity. Visual acuity measures only a small subset of our visual function. A more correct measurement is contrast vision and the contrast sensitivity function (CSF) of the eye. The CSF is analogous to the optical transfer function of the eye, but it also incorporates the neuronal contrast transfer at the retina.
The CSF can be, slightly incorrectly, described as the information transfer ability of the eye and visual system. The problem with refractive surgery is that while you might increase the visual acuity it often comes at the expense of decreased contrast vision. But since contrast vision is seldom tested....
Generally ophthalmologists aren't keen on having refractive surgery, at least those at the university hospital where I work.
Your wife is also waiting for this, so PUT DOWN THE BEER and you get yo sorry ass outta the pub and get home RIGHT NOW.
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Ophthalmologists will put an eyedrop on your eye to force the pupal to dialate. They can then look inside with a bright light and a lens to inspect the health of the retina and optic nerve.
Speaking to a medical doctor, there's apparently a belief in the medical field that complications from LASIK procedures are under-reported.
Are there any short term and 5 year followup studies of the procedure?
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
Right now I need glasses to see far away, but nothing to see up close. So, I read and use the computer without glasses, but use glasses to watch TV and drive. If I got Lasik, the best they could do is reverse the situation.
Hyperopia and astigmatism :(
http://www.usaeyes.org/faq/sub...
"Luck is my middle name," said Rincewind, indistinctly. "Mind you, my first name is Bad." -- Terry Pratchett
> Ever lose a lens or contact?
I use daily contact lenses so when I lose one it's only around 50p wasted :)
No, they put a few drops of some chemical on your eyes, then wait a few minutes, and the chemical forces your pupils to dilate, in other words the hole at the front of your eye gets bigger and more open. Then they can look inside your eye and see if the retina looks healthy -- it gives them a bigger hole to peer through.
After the procedure your eyes take a while to re-adjust so the pupil stays dilated for a bit. My eye doctor gives patients free eyeshades if they don't have sunglasses with them, as it can be really hard on your eyes to go out in the sunlight with pupils still dilated -- sunlight can be extremely bright and painful. It wears off over an hour or two and your pupils get back to normal.
I like to think that my contact lenses give me cyborg eyes (eg. technology that is so integrated with a person that it becomes an extension of their own body, while offering enhanced capabilities) - not only do they give me perfect vision but they're also UV protective :)
Plus I use dailies so I don't have to worry about cleaning or losing them.
Yes, that would do it!
It means the use a droplet that forces your pupils to dilate wide open. Normally your pupil isn't dilated very much unless it's dark and if a bright light would be shown in your eyes it will contract and narrow. The dilation allows them to widen your pupils while still using a bright like which allows them to see far more of the inside of your eye.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
I have very small cataracts forming and my family has a history of cataracts. I could go for the cosmetic surgury now, but the cataracts are still likely to form. I could wait until those form then get a non-cosmetic lens replacement surgery. Granted, that won't likely happen at least for another 30 years so it might still be worth it but that is one reason to consider not getting lasik.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
I'm nearsighted and have worn glasses on and off since I was about 10. I wore contacts through most of my 20s, but returned to glasses in my 30s.
Now that I'm in my 50s I'm in that stage where my near vision is starting to deteriorate and I'm slowly becoming far-sighted. The first real manifestation of this was when flying at night, when I was experiencing massive eyestrain reading charts in my lap, but could see outside the plane just fine. So I got progressives the last time I got new glasses, and I'm fine.
I don't wear glasses when I'm not driving or flying. I prefer a soft-focus world. :-)
Am I a candidate for laser eye surgery? According to the web sites, not really. I could get good distant correction, but would then need glasses for reading. Since I need glasses to drive and to fly anyway, I'm not sure this would buy me anything.
...laura
Lucy? Is that you?
I suppose I can say I know a pretty good number of ophthalmologists, and nearly all of them wear glasses. None of them have had LASIK surgery. I guess that says a lot about the risk-benefit ratio of this sort of procedure...
They apply special drops to your eyes that temporarily dilate them so they can look into your eye easier. You could also eat some magic mushrooms before you go to the eye doctor, but then who knows what you'd end up reading off that chart during your eye exam.
You're trading off future reading vision for distance vision now, and the older you get the closer "now" becomes.
I wish someone had told that to me before I had LASIK done. Even worse, I asked for PRK and discovered they were giving me LASIK when they were cutting my eye. They are not supposed to cut your eye for PRK.
*sigh*
I have terrible reading vision now... which is normal. Before I had the surgery, I could rest a book on my face and see the texture of the paper under the ink. Not anymore.
Ultimately, I have no problems with laser eye surgery but you need an honest doctor and full description of the trade offs beforehand so that you can make a fully informed decision.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
On the one hand, I like my glasses. They have also prevented stuff from getting in my eyes more than once.
On the other hand, LASIK involves someone slicing into the front of my eyeballs while I am fully conscious and watching them do it.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
The sad ting is that was a number thrown at me when I was in high school. My eyes continued to change for sometime after that but Drs really didn't seem to want to talk about it when I asked, just assured me that it was correctable. My first real clue was the day they had to special order contacts for me. Then one day I asked if I would be considered legally blind without correction, my Dr burst out a giggle and said of course I would! I have to admit that was pretty damned scary. At least one Dr talked to me about PRK where they could do slits in my lens to try and get it to correct but I was told that it would really ruin my night vision and the thought of someone cutting into my eyes scared the crap out of me! Lasik was on the horizon shortly afterwards and Drs were telling me about it. I was still resistant until I was told I could no longer wear contacts and eye glasses were working out "poorly" to say the least. The surgery really helped out my quality of life for sure. Losing your towel and stuff at the beach because the current pushed you down and you can't see well enough to recognize them without help SUCKS!
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
That's very possible. I will admit that once I was able to get my surgery and had it done that I haven't kept up. I knew that they had enlarged the area of the cut for my procedure and I also knew that they had begun mapping. I knew about the cut because a Dr warned me about it after mine had been done and told me that if I had further corrections (I had one correction and a flap lift to clean out dead cells prior) they would likely cut further out. Later I was told about the surface mapping and a Dr even mapped out the one eye I have that's not as good as I might like - my dominant eye no less! However since my vision is so damned much better than it was and I'm not a big fan of taking risks I've held off. I should probably spend some time and learn about the options
to be clear - the option I skipped was the cutting of slits in the lens to adjust vision (how it was described). the option I went with required a cutting of a flap and laser ablation of the material underneath done right after that was approved. I'd consider surface ablation now I think...
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
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.
I'm no eyexpert..
Get dilated, what does that mean? Do they alter the way your eye dilates, like changing its settings?
They put drops (don't know what of) into your eyes, causing the pupils to stay dilated for a little while. Gives the doc easy visual access into your eyeballs.
I had my Lasik op 10 years ago, with much success. I had -5 on both eyes plus some astigmatism so I was nearly blind. And after the op not using any glasses or contacts was great. However, the problem is, I've been using computers, tablets, smartphones etc. for 15-16 hours every day. So I got my myopia back (about -1) with some astigmatism. So I was wondering had I been doing some outdoor work or something else in the first place, I wouldn't be having the -5 before. I don't know. What happens I'm not happy going back to glasses again.
"Getting dilated" means they put drops in your eyes that temporarily increase the amount of dilation of your pupils, beyond the level of dilation that they are naturally at (which changes based on the intensity of the light in your environment). Normally your pupils will not be very dilated in a well-lit room, or with the doctor's flashlight shining right in your eye, or in a more natural setting, when the sun is out. When the pupil is not dilated, it isn't letting very much light through your eye -- most of it is blocked, to prevent sensory overload.
Without the pupil dilation mechanism, you would either be completely blind by dusk, or the sun would be so bright that you'd be unable to bear it (imagine natural sunlight being 10x brighter than normal; enough to be painful). Animals that adapted the pupil dilation mechanism could presumably be more adaptable to more extreme levels of light and dark, allowing them to evade predators and catch prey in more diverse ranges of illumination. This is necessary because of the classic problem with ANY sensor: if you make your sensor extremely sensitive to even tiny changes in the signal (i.e. illumination), you'll be able to see well in the dark, but the light of the sun would be so extreme as to throw all of your sensor's readings completely off the chart, thus you get "overloaded" and you can't process that amount of illumination. If you make your sensor extremely insensitive to changes in the signal, you'll be OK in the daytime, but once the sun drops below the horizon, your eyes are useless for hunting or evading predators. The pupil gives us the best of both worlds and allows us to develop a sensor that's moderately sensitive, and can give us very clear and detailed imaging capability at a huge range of illumination levels, ranging from moonlight to full sunlight on a clear day at noon.
Once the pupil is dilated, a trained ophthalmologist (a true eye doctor, not just an optometrist, which is the eye equivalent of a Nurse Practitioner in general medicine) can use special equipment to look inside your eye. They test for things such as glaucoma, cataracts, astigmatism, detached retina, and possibly other diseases or abnormalities of the eye.
Many other senses have something that functions equivalently to the pupil, by the way. The tensor tympani in the ear regulates how sensitive you are to sound. If a very loud, sudden sound occurs, like a gunshot or an explosion, the tympani can prevent hearing damage if it reacts fast enough, or at least reduce the amount of hearing damage. The difference is that the tympany is usually completely relaxed in the environments most of us live in, as if your pupil were entirely dilated all the time. That's why in a quiet house you can hear very faint sounds, but if you stand right next to a train as it goes roaring by, and then try to talk to someone mere seconds after it has passed and the sound level has dropped off, you'll still have trouble conversing with that person at an "inside voice" level of speech volume.
The slits you are thinking of is RK. I had wavefront PRK. It is basically the same thing as LASIK. The only difference is instead of cutting the flap, they put a chemical on your corneal skin and scrape it off. After the procedure it regrows. PRK is what military pilots are allowed to get and is paid for because after it heals it is more structurally stable. It just hurts some more.
i personally stick with glasses because i have had glasses since the sixth grade and my friends have said to get lasik over and over but i have just grown too used to wearing glasses to the point that it is uncomfortable to not wear them.
I've had to, in the past, pull steel splinters (from a rock-hammer, a day-to-day tool at the time) from embedded in the surface of my prescription lenses. When I go out of my office and into the workspace in which I work, I am required by company site policy to wear protective spectacles, even if of no optical effect. So I wear my prescription safety spectacles.
Lasik eye surgery would do nothing to remove the obligation to use that PPE (Personal Protective Equipment).
Dissent on this point is taken as a resignation. You're escourted off the site, with your belongings, never to return and never to work for that client again, anywhere in the world, in any position.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
[The slashdot GUI makes it impossible to be sure I am replying to a post or creating a new post. My intention here is to reply to the original post having subject: Laser Eye Surgery, Revisited 10 Years Later]
The reason I don't have Lasik done is because I have bifocals for reading but normally am able to read and see clearly to about 18 inches. My optometrist informed me that after Lasik, my close up vision will be worse. I.e., I am now able to read and see things close to me without corrective lenses. But after Lasik the distance would be decreased substantially and I would need higher power corrective lenses for close up sight. I prefer to be glasses free for close up sight.
You need the 5D professional eyeing technique.
Pretend there is some witty statement here.
I had fairly strong lenses : -15 and -13 diopters. I have no idea where my vision landed on the 20/xx scale, as I couldn't even see the chart without glasses. Lasik was not an option at my level - too much material would need to be ablated, leaving me with ... structurally unsound corneas.
I was fortunate enough (!) to develop cataracts 30 years early. One became annoying when driving at night, which tilted me on the necessity-scale from cosmetic-surgery level to medical-necessity level. Only one eye was really bad enough to be an issue, but my correction was so strong that it was also deemed necessary to do the other eye to avoid the large difference in apparent size of objects.
Three side-effects of the cataract removal and lens implant surgery:
1. I now need reading glasses - they are no longer optional, as I have absolutely no ability to change focal distance. I could have gone with monovision, but didn't want to chance tolerance issues. As I am mid-forties, and was already wearing progressive lenses, this is fairly minor.
2. No more "coke bottle". The implanted replacement lenses are ordered just like a basic soft contact lens, with a certain amount of spherical correction, just enough to cover the -15 and -13 diopters my glasses or contacts used to cover. Now that I'm no longer looking through thick concave lenses perched in front of my face, everything appears noticeably larger.
3. Minor starbursts from very bright point sources of light.
You might notice that only #3 is a negative side-effect.
I still wear glasses, but for a minor amount of astigmatism, reading, and a couple diopters of prism (slightly cross-eyed).
I can now get out of bed, see the alarm clock, find my way to the bathroom, etc, without glasses. I can lose my glasses and not be almost completely helpless. I can get by with a cheap pair of readers from the dollar store in a pinch.
Hell, the other day I swam in the sea, able for the first time to see the shore, other swimmers, boats, birds, etc.
Happy? Oh hell yes.
Well, crap.
So much for paragraphs.
I apparently fall into this category myself. I think if I could get Lasik I would have by now. A number of years ago I went in to get an assessment. I was told due to my prescription which is about -11.5 and -12 that I do not have enough coronal material for Lasik and that PKR would be the way to go. However PKR was three times the cost at over 6000$, and has a much longer healing time, several days of useless, followed by weeks of gradual change. At the time I didn't have anyone to take care of me basically for a few days or even drive me to the city that has the clinic and back. Oddly enough I got my eyes tested again recently by the same guy, and now he recommends getting lenses implanted in the eye (forget the procedure name) which is done by a cataract surgeon. Their draw back is not only do they have a extended healing time, cost about the same as PKR, but you also loose your near vision, so would then require reading glasses... Apparently it is free (Canada) if you have cataracts (My Mom recently had it done), so I guess I have to hope my eyes degenerate more...
Anyway I have done nothing other than buy more expensive glasses, but maybe someday...