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Laser Vision Correction?
Here's another query from Yet Another Anonymous Coward: "I have been considering laser vision correction for quite some time. However, I can't seem to find anyone who can give me a straight answer on what is involved, what it costs, etc. Has anyone had the surgury, or know where I can find information on it? "
I had a friend who had laser vision correction.
:)
It cost him about $1,200 per eye, (it's done on a per eye basis) but I think it can probably get cheaper than that depending on where you go.
He LOVED it after he had had it done, although he did say that it felt very disgusting as it was actually happnening. (Peeling of the cornea, reshaping, and replacing, I believe)
He did have to go for a touch up operation about 6 months after he got it done originally, and that was a bit annoying but free.
I had a discussion with him the other day about it - he thinks it was worth it although I've heard of other people who have had to have touch up operations as well.
I'm betting that it would save money over the long term, and I'm considering it now myself, but coughing up the cash in the first place can be hard. (For some people, anyway.
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
Laser Vision involves a simple procedure that takes around 4 hours (last time I looked). It involves shaping your eyes to focus the light correctly on the back of your eye. The costs vary and the doctors here in the states haven't been doing it much over 5 years. I talked to an eye doctor about it and I found out some of the costs: 2k / eye if you go to a GOOD doctor, maybe less for a different one. He also told me that if he was going to have it done, he would persue a doctor in Canada (supposively they don't have the restrictions on research like we do here and have been using this since the late 80's). My suggestion is to go to a local eye doctor and quiz him on it. They should have brochures and such to give you if you are a canidate for the surgery. P.S. First post. Troy
Time Magazine did a story on it just a little while ago. The general consensus seemed to be that most of the time it's absolutely wonderful, while the rest of the time it really, really screws your eyes up.
Marissa
My Dad had the procedure about a year ago, and it worked great for him. He had it done at Kaiser Permanente in Arleta, CA. The procedure cost him $2500, and it was worth it for him. This is how the procedure is done, its actually pretty simple. You are awake through it all. They cut your cornea off with a laser, rotate it, then set it back on the eye. And thats it. My Dad had to have his right eye done twice because of an astigmatism. He said he felt no pain, it was just a wierd experience is what he said. It took him about 2 weeks before he could see properly (mostly because of the astigmatism) but now that both eyes are healed he sees fine. He is a graphic artist, so he used to have to wear glasses all the time while working on images, but no longer. And now the only time he needs to wear glasses is to read real small print, anything smaller then newspaper print.
I also have a friend who's mother had it done, and she healed fine in about 2 days. Both my Dad and my friends mother have a reported 20/20 vision, and they are both very happy that they had it done. Oh, they both went to the same hospital to have it done.
Sometimes teh eye fights back and you will have
to wear those specs. There is a new technology (dont remember hte name) where they insert a lens in the eye and it can be removed if there is change in the vision. Totally undestruvtive as compared to laser correction.
CP
I had my eyes laser vision corrected about 1 year ago now, and I have had no regrets whatsoever. I used to have 20/400 in the left and 20/175 in the right, but since the surgery I now have a stable 20/20 in both eyes.
If you've never had to wear glasses or contacts you can't even imagine the feeling of being able to SEE normally for the first time ever! You walk around all day thinking about all the things you can see now for the first couple of months.
Mine cost about $2400 per eye, including free checkups and free enhancements should the surgery not take completely. I know you can probably get it for "real cheap" someplace else, but step back a minute and think how much that $5000 is really worth. What is that..
1) Room and board for a few months?
2) A piece of crap car?
3) Mebbe a few new computers?
or
4) Perfect vision, all day, everyday, for the rest of your life.
Hehe. I can't push it enough; mortage the house, sell your soul, go get it done.
I know many people who've had it done and I myself have had it done in one eye.
Everyone else I know was elated with the results.
I, however, am left with irregular astigmatism in my eye. Basically, I see double out of one eye. That sucks. I'd rather be nearsighted. It's basically untreatable except (maybe) with a hard contact. I can see better than before, without contacts, but not as good as when I had my contacts in. Now, I won't risk my right eye.
Bottom line: it's a low risk but there is still a risk. It's your eyesight. As long as you are awake and have your eyes open a PRK or LASIK fuckup will be right there bugging you. Every single minute.
Personally, if I had it to do over again I would stick with my contacts. Maybe in a few years technology will advance to the point where they can fix my messed-up eye and reduce the risk from low to astronomically low. Until then, forget it.
My mom has worked for an optomologist (sp!?) for over 12 years and he refuses to do the surgery because there is still an alarming number of patients who report their vision degenerating years after the surgery. There's not enough long term data yet to really know what's going on. Plus, even if you get the surgery, you're still predisposed to needing bifocals or readers once you get a bit older...
In a nutshell, it's still an infant technology, and the recommendation is to wait. If you can't wait, find a good doctor, and be sure to ask what his/her complication rate is - if he won't tell you drop him like a Intel 820 chipset.
There are quite a few complications.. and most people experience the so-called "halo" effect for several months after receiving the surgery. You'll also typically have to undergo multiple surgeries - mainly to "fine-tune" your vision. The procedure also isn't guaranteed to have you seeing 20/20... although between 20/20 and 20/40 is common. Some people (although uncommon) even get their vision corrected to better than normal.. as good as 20/10.
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I say largely because while your eyes aren't affected, your muscles are.. and they are responsible for up to 20% of your visual acuity if memory serves. So it's a good idea to take frequent breaks (for a variety of reasons - not just for your eyes), look away from the monitor every now and then (look far away, wait, look back) to get those muscles working, and eat a normal diet. The last one will work wonders for your energy levels and stuff... I find alot of geeks have less than stellar diets.. myself included. disclaimer: I'm a coder, not a doctor jim!
Hope you found this useful....
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However, unless there's some compelling reason (approaching blindness, you're a football player, etc.) why you need to lose the glasses/contact and quick, I don't see a reason to rush into what seems to be still a rather immature area of medicine.
Glasses and contacts are a hassle, but the unknown long-term effects of laser vision correction should scare the bejezus out of you -- what would you do for a living if your eyes didn't work right ten years from now? The point is, we have thousands of years experience with letting eyesight get gradually worse, and we can generally predict when things about about to go seriously wrong. Until you get to that point, why risk something so important?
That said, I must admit that I dream about the day that I'll be able to wake up in the morning and see my clock again (without accidently leaving my contacts in, that is). Never having to clean my glasses or deal with a cat hair on my contact ever again is a really appealing prospect. Just not sp appealing that I'd risk making my situation worse.
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Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
The cost is much cheaper in Canada, $1000 for both eyes. The cost was finally in a range that we could afford so we took the trip from Seattle to Vancouver.
We spent about 1.5 hours in their office and when she came out her eyes were stinging a bit and sensitive to the light but she could see with out her glasses. (She got to wear those cool sun glasses.) They recommended taking a nap after the surgery so she did. After the nap, her eyes felt much better and she could see great. (Her eyes were in the range of 20/400 or so before the surgery.) The only problem she had was a little bit of a star effect at night. The next morning at the checkup, her vision was at 20/25 and most of the stinging was gone.
At her 1 month appointment she could see 20/20 and there was no more star effect at night. The only complaint she has is her eyes are dry and she is supposed to use some special eye drops for a while.
She would do it again in an instant.
One interesting thing to note is not everyone who goes to have the proceedure is able to get it done due to some thinness in their cornea. While I was waiting for my wife, a young lady was rejected at the clinic due to a thin cornea. I was suprised they did not catch it at the pre-operative eye exam. This also happened to a neighbor of mine. The clinic ended up paying for their hotel stay for the hastle in getting to Vancouver.
The basic upshot is that there's about a 75-85 percent chance that your vision will improve to 20/40. Past that, the odds decrease, but are at about 40-60 percent for 20/20 vision. For a list of statistics, go here.
Side effects can include halos around bright lights, starburst effects, and other interesting visual abnormalities. They tend to go away in a few weeks to a few months.
The procedure itself is very quick, and takes about 15 min per eye. For a pretty good description of the procedure, check out this page, about halfway down.
If you do read one page on the subject, let it be this one. This page presents a negative viewpoint on LASIK surgery, with some statistics, problems, etc. I intend to have this done, but I'd still read this to make very sure that you comprehend the risks.
Price can range anywhere from $1200-$2500, depending on the place. The one I'm looking at is about $1650/eye. Most places include "touch-up" procedures (ie, the eye reshaped itself and needs re-lasering) for free in a 1-2 year period. Make sure you check about this.
Most places will allow you to watch a procedure, if you're curious. Might be a smart thing to do.
Another good place for information is the Yahoo! category dealing with the subject. Lots of good links here.
Tsu
--- Now, go away 'cuz you all up in my Kool-Aid!
I had the LASIK procedure done, and I went from "must wear contacts since glasses cut off air supply," (-6.5 diopter contacts) to 20/25 or 20/30 - which is exactly right. (A reputable doctor won't aim for 20/20 in someone pushing forty because they're going to naturally become a bit farsighted in the next few years, so I should hit 20/20 in a few years.) I also had a modest amount of astigmatism which they completely eliminated.
My advice to anyone considering LASIK surgery is to whack yourself on the head a few times with a 2x4 until you get your priorities straight.
You do NOT want to make this decision on the basis of price. I paid $5000 (both eyes, plus followups), which was the usual price quoted by reputable doctors in this area.
I could have saved a thousand dollars or two... if I was willing to have my eyes operated on by the guy who wasn't making royalty payments on his laser gear. I think my doctor said that saved him $500 or so a pop -- but it also meant that his gear wasn't getting serviced. Maybe the laser delivering less power than he thought, or more. Or maybe it was randomly mixing the two. Any variation will make it much harder to get predictable results.
Or I could have saved some money by going with the guys who had just gotten back from their seminar and were excited at getting into the exciting new world of laser surgery.
During one of my follow up visits (and with myopia this severe it took me several weeks before I could drive at night or read the newspaper without reading glasses) my doctor (not the laser guy, but the glasses guy I have seen for a decade) mentioned that he had lunch with a peer a few weeks earlier. My vision, at the time, was still a little off but it was clearly getting better every time I came in. His peer's patient started out with slightly better vision than me, but she went to a cheaper doctor and one eye had severe astigmatism and her other eye was severely overcorrected -- and LASIK correction for farsightedness is far more invasive.
The point should be clear: PRICE IS THE LEAST OF YOUR WORRIES. Most people are focused on the "reasonable best" that can happen (e.g., "gee, I should have 20/25 vision and not need glasses"), and not on the "reasonable worst". An experienced doctor with good corporate support might have a "reasonable worst" that you'll still need (thin) glasses at times, but you won't have major vision problems. An inexperienced doctor or even an experienced one cutting corners may have a "reasonable worst" that you'll be overcorrected (farsighted), have bad astigmatism, or worst.
Is fucked up vision for the rest of your life really worth pennies per day? ($1000/40 years is $25/year, or something like 8c/day.)
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Besides, I think girls look sexier with glasses than without. :)
One year ago I had the Lasik procedure performed on both eyes (at the same time). I started reviewing my options two years prior to the surgery and settled on the (more expensive) option of Lasik because the procedure was less invasive and there were fewer, and less dramatic, side-effects and risks post-surgery. The total cost for my surgery, with a reputable physician (which I'll address momentarily), was 5k. It is very important to select a physician who not only has received GOOD training but has performed a lot of procedures. Don't hesitate to ask for specifics such as how many procedures they have performed and the rate of complications in their patients. Feel free to contact me off line if you want details on my physician, who is in the Baltimore/DC area. You have to be awake for the procedure, which can be a little disconcerting. I was offered Valium and told the standard dose is 10mg. I asked for and got 30mg so the edge on my anxiety was dulled quite a bit! The entire procedure lasted about 10 minutes with total time under the laser of 7 seconds on one eye and 6 for the other. They will let friends or family watch the procedure on a monitor and you definitely have to have someone with you to drive you home. This is my perspective of the procedure: Lay back in reclining chair with head rested in indentation. The doctor applied numbing drops to my eyes, which stung a very little bit (like dust got in my eyes). She then used a circular device to prop my right eye open (talking to me the whole time, btw) then lowered what appeared to be a circular object down on to my eye (I felt a slight pressure, which was the incision). She then used forceps to peel back the cornea flap. This was the most uncomfortable point for me because I went blind, with the darkness spreading from the outside in. When she started the laser to resurface my cornea I could 'see' the red lines going across my eye. Seven seconds later (and she was counting down) she used the forceps again to place the cornea flap back down, put in a few antibiotic drops and asked me to close my eye. After the second eye was done they gave me some dark glasses and antibiotic drops as well as some plastic shields to tape over my eyes when I slept for the next week. I could see after the procedure, but that Valium had me swaying! I went straight home to bed and slept through to the morning. When I woke up and after I'd peeled off the bug-eyed looking shields and opened my eyes for the first time it was like a miracle. My vision was perfect. Of course, out of habit I started to fumble for my glasses! I did have some side-effects for the first month. At night I would see a halo around street lights and on-coming traffic, which made driving at night a little uncomfortable for me. This resolved the first month. I am, however, more sensitive to bright lights and always wear sunglasses outside on clear days. All in all, I am very glad I had this procedure and would recommend laser corrective surgery to others with the following caveats: do your research and choose the procedure that is right for you, don't choose your procedure based on cost - wait and save more if you must or look into health savings accounts with your employer to use pre-tax $ (some will even pay for it up front and then you pay back over a period of time), don't be afraid to ask for more Valium, and find a reputable physician that makes you feel comfortable.
There are two major forms of treatment currently available: LASIK and PRK - LASIK being the most common form. If you dig deeply enough, you will likely find enough discomforting information so as to convince you away from the surgery.
In my case, I work at a company where the insurance policy covers LASIK surgery. Nearly a full third of the staff has had the procedure. All of them have been "successful" but the one thing that goes unnoticed by most people in their research is what exactly defines a successful operation.
According to the multiple sites that I had researched, surgeons consider it a successful operation if you're vision is 20/40 or better. However, according to many testimonials, some doctors don't check pupil size before surgery. If the laser diameter is smaller than your dialated pupil, be prepared for visual artifacts and likely much worsened night vision.
For more information, I highly recommend examining the following URL. What you will read may scare you.
http://www.surgicaleyes.org
The one thing to keep in mind, that I had heard while I was digging for more information, is that 1 in 50 surgeries have an undesirable outcome. The surgeries may have been deemed successful but the side effects have not been satisfactory to the recipients.
Given those odds, I was not going to wager organs that are currently unreplaceable.
Just my $0.02 and recently collected data.
sleight
We also know four or five others who have done the Lasik procedure, and only one out of all of us needed a touch-up (which is no big deal anyway).
Oh, and one possible side effect that I and one of my aquaintances have noticed is dry eyes now (though it could be that we always had dry eyes and never noticed it because of the nice wind-shields in front of our eyeballs).
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"You can lead a mind to facts but you cannot make it think."
I had LASIK done about about 3 months ago now and have been very happy with the results. I had a very strong prescription (left eye -10.50 +2.50, right eye -10.00 +1.00) and now have 20/15 vision in both eyes. Things definitely look sharper than they ever did with glasses or contacts. It's really great to be able to see my alarm clock, too.
I have experienced one side effect, however. When my pupils are very dilated (at night, for instance) I often get halos and glare around light sources. This is due to the fact that some light still comes in through less corrected portions of the cornea around the edges, because I had such an extreme prescription and have large pupils.
I'm told that this will get somewhat better over the next few months, but may not go away completely. It's something I can adapt to, but it has made driving at night difficult at times. Even with this, I'm happy with the results.
In America, there are 160 million people wearing either glasses or contacts. (TIME, 1999) There are two different forms of laser surgery. One is called "PRK", which stands for "photorefractive keratectomy", and the other is called "LASIK", which stands for "laser in situ Keratomileusis". There are some fundamental differences between these two procedures. Basically, the PRK method is used most often on smaller, less drastic eye corrections. It has virtually no human involvement (there are no cuts made by a doctor because only a machine does any slicing) but it has a longer recovery period. LASIK is used for more drastic changes in vision quality and has a faster recovery period. This procedure depends more on the doctor making cuts, so there is more need to be absolutely sure that the doctor is experienced with this particular treatment. A basic thing to be concerned about is actually, it turns out, the software used for the laser path. Depending who you go to, newer software will be available for better vision. This cost is, of course, passed on to the patient which is something else to consider. If you are interested in seeing a photo essay example of LASIK surgery, that is available here. And for those squeamish folks out there, these are illustrations. No blood, no gore. Check it out.
Well, I asked my eye doctor about the surgery about 6 months ago, when I had my last exam. He said I'm an excellent candidate, etc. etc. etc. but then talked about his misgivings about the procedure:
1) He doesn't recommend it until you're 25- he says that before then your eyes are still growing and changing.
2) There have been no long term studies on the after-effects of the surgery. He described how before the surgery, the cornea is a grid of perfect hexagons, and after the surgery, the grid is gone, replaced by fused cells, small lesions, etc. He said that theoretically that should have no effect on the long-term health of the eye, but that lesions and fused cells don't make him comfortable.
He was overall definitely enthusiastic, but I think those two misgivings are definitely something to mention to your eye doctor when discussing the procedure.
Matt Zito
me@mzi.to
I saw a television new segment the other day about VisX, the company that makes the laser equipment. They are just now coming out with a new diagnostic device that more accurately measures your eye. They are already able to hit 20/20 most of the time, but with the new technology that is coming out, you'll be able to have "better than perfect" vision -- 20/10 in many cases. This is perhaps the first time in history that there has been surgery available to improve human functionality beyond what is "natural". If you don't think that's cool, you have no business calling yourself a geek, I say. Should be out by the end of next year....
Wikia
I think the big problem is people not shopping around for their doctors well. Before I had LASIK my eyes were pretty bad, I could make out the E on the chart and could guess some of the letters on the line below it but that was about all. I don't have my last prescreption handy and don't remember exactly how bad I was.
I've been waiting quite a while for many of the clinical trials to finish. My normal eye care doctor also had been watching the trials and was trained in RK but refused to use it. Recently he told me I should look into LASIK and I did. With a vengence.
I spent over 4 hours talking with the doctor who I eventually had do my surgury. I spoke with nearly a dozen of the over 1,000 patients he had already treated. Oh, and I went to the most respectable clinic in my area to find him. (Cleveland Clinic for reference) I asked him flat out about many of the possible outcomes and complications and he did NOT try to sugar coat anything. He was very upfront and honest. After that I researched the research and statistics that were available regarding LASIK. Specifically I got the statistics on the procedures he had performed and the statistics of the people who had trained him. I was willing to play the odds based on what I saw.
Oh I should also mention that he warned me beforehand that my pupils were borderline on being large enough to cause problems with Night Vision.
If given the chance again I would definatly have the surgure again. I can now read the 20/20 line as if it was a book in front of my face, and the 20/15 isn't much harder. I can do better but that depends on the lighting. In bright light I feel like an Eagle. In dim light I'm still 20/20 but can notice some haze around light sources. (Still not as bad as the bluring when my glasses used to get dirty [10 minutes after washing them]).
However, I do not like driving at night any more than necessary expect in brightly lit areas. As long as I concentrate I don't notice the halos around headlights. But if I let my concentration down and my eyes start to relax it can become very distracting. (I am easily distracted however!).
Overall If you are thinking about surgury give LASIK a good strong look but be sure to do your OWN research and not take anyone else's at face value. I've seen plenty of explanations of the same statistics that are damn convincing in both directions. Get the stats yourself and make your own decesions.
--- Juggle juggle@hitesman.com
If you don't like the cosmetics of glasses (but if you don't, why are you reading "News for Nerds"?), get disposable one-day contact lenses. They are very comfortable, trivial to deal with, and seem to be quite safe.
I had the newer LASIK version of the surgery, where they cut a flap into the epithelial layer of your eye (only a few microns thick), lift it out of the way, and then lase the actual corneal tissue. This is generally more effective than the older PRK surgery, with a significantly faster recovery time, though more expensive. At the center I went to (New England Eye Center at Tufts/NEMC), they charged $1500 per eye for PRK, $2000 per for LASIK.
The actual procedure has been described in many other places in this thread, but here's my $.02:
From the moment they give you the Valium until you are done, it's about a half hour. The majority of the time is just waiting for the Valium to kick in. The actual procedure takes about 10 minutes, of which the majority is prep time. The keratome (the device that makes the incision) is only about a minute, and the laser generally fires for about 10 seconds. At the very end, you start to get a whiff of the tissue burned, which is a little weird. Recovery is nearly instantaneous, I was able to see out of each eye within about a half-hour (though I kept the plastic shield on each eye anyways). NEEC will generally try to do your two eyes about 2 weeks apart, starting with your non-dominant eye first in case they find that a further adjustment is needed. Follow-up appointments are frequent: I went in the day after each surgery, a week after, and then I went after a month, two months, and six months. I have one more follow-up appointment in early February (the surgeries were this past January).
Before, I had a -3.25 prescription (I'm not quite sure what it translates to), and now I have 20/15 vision in both eyes. No noticable side effects like haloing or anything like that - I don't seem to be any more sensitive to glare than I was before. If anything, I'm a hair farsighted now - it takes me a moment to shift focus from far to near (I can shift the other way as fast as ever). It's not a problem so much as something different I had to adjust to.
It wound up costing me about $3000, factoring in the flex savings plan I used and the $1000 I had to come up with out-of pocket. My company lets me advance my total flex contribution at any point during the year, and then takes it out of my paycheck tax-free throughout the year. So I was able to front-load it and get all the money in January, which was nice. I saved about $1000 in taxes that way and lowered the effective price from $4000 to $3000. If your employer has a flex plan, use it by all means. A handful of insurers may pay for it directly, in which case I wish I had worked for one of them when I did the surgery, but most insurers will not pay.
Beats the hell out of glasses, I can certainly say - though I do sometimes have the old "ghost reflex" of pushing the non-existent glasses up on my nose...
The first thing I did after the surgeries were complete was go out and buy a pair of the funkiest Oakley wraparounds I could find. Because I could!
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
I'm going to LASIK surgery done eventually, probably in Windsor Ontario (my hometown) since one of the leading surgeons happens to operate from there (Dr. Tafour at the Windsor Laser Eye Institute). He was doing LASIK surgery long before the US approved it, the laws on experimental techniques are more conducive to research and development in Canada. Click here if you're interested. There are actually real statistics on this page broken down by type of problem and frequency.
If you're in or near a metropolitan area you will be approached by laser centers offering really good deals on the procedure. The reason this is usually done is that this is a new center, they're trying to establish a large number of operations early on to instill confidence in future customers. I'm not saying this to discourage anybody from accepting the offer. Every doctor practicing LASIK had to start somewhere. I just believe in disclosure.
Decide if you really want the procedure. It's not going to make you an instant sex symbol. My personal reasons are that I can't wear contacts, I don't tear enough. I've got a very wide field of vision, regardless of the size of the glasses frame I've got an annoying field of uncorrected vision around me, this is distracting to me and potentially dangerous.
A while back, Consumer Reports did an article on it.
It seems to work pretty well, at least in the short term, though apparently many LASIC users feel a bit more postoperative pain than those who undergo "traditional" RK (though I'm not letting anyone near my eyes with a scalpel). However, often the procedure works too well, and people get increasingly farsighted as the years pass (more so than the natural tendency toward farsightedness as one ages).
Also, I hope you weren't considering climbing Everest after this procedure; one guy tried and he was blinded after reaching a certain altitude, though his sight returned after he'd hit the top and went back down. Airplanes shouldn't have that problem, seeing as they're pressurized.
It's a tradeoff. My own vision is pretty bad, but I think I'm going to wait this one out until the percentages are better.
This is not quite the same procedure, but you might be interested in the diary kept by Larry Wall Author of Perl Busy Man last year about his cornea transplant.
In some of the later entries, Larry writes that he might consider LASIK in the future, but evidently that hasn't happened so far.
Always keep a sapphire in your mind
There's been a lot of talk about this on sci.astro.amateur.
The problem is that the surgery works well in the center of the lens, but creates diffraction problems (due to cuts) and abberation problems further from the center where the correction is poor.
During the daytime, when the pupil is constricted, the results may be quite good, but at night time when the pupil may dilate to as much as 7mm or even more in a few cases, your vision could be wrecked. For this reason, it is important to know your maximum pupil dilation if you are considering this surgery. As you get older, your maximum pupil gets smaller, so that typically (but not always) if you are over 40 you cannot dilate to more than 5mm, wheras if you are twenty you probably can dilate to 7mm. Naturally, this varies greatly from person to person, but as you get older your chance of serious night vision degredation is reduced.
The consensus in the astro group is that if you care about quality of vision, it is better to go with a premium eyeglass (we're talking lenses, not fancy frames here) from a manufacturer like Zeiss.
If my maximum pupillary dilation was 5mm or less, I might consider this if only fair night vision (i.e. good enough to drive with) were good enough for me. In that case, I'd consult with my eye doctor and if possible talk to people he had done this procedure to.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
If you're a pilot, or want to learn to fly a plane, don't get this surgery. It is explicitly not approved for pilots. The halos and small distortions that can be caused by this surgery can have a serious negative effect on your ability to visually judge distances and altitudes when near the ground (like when you're landing, for example). These problems are worse at night. Judgement of height above ground when landing is entirely visual, and critical to a safe landing. At night, this judgment is almost entirely from the spacing and relative motion of the runway lights -- if you're not seeing these clearly and undistorded, you and your passengers going to have an unpleasant experience.
I have also done the procedure a little more recently. About two months ago. The price hasn't changed much, I paid $3700 for both eyes. As far as payments, you have several options depending on where you go. Cash up front will work anywhere you go. My doctor gave me the option to pay half upfront, a quarter the next month and the remainder the next month. He also had a bank that you could get a loan from and make payments. As far as the actual procedure goes, noone is being very clear. So, here goes. First they take a whole bunch of measurements of your eye with cameras and computers. Then they give you 10mg of valium just to calm your nerves a bit. Then they put anaesthetic eyedrops in the eye(s) getting done. They make you wait about 10 minutes for the drops to take efeect. They check that buy literally poking you in the eye and seeing if you can feel it. If you can't, you're all ready to go. When they took me into the operating room, my doctor offered me a teddy bear to hold onto for support. This procedure may vary by doctor. They put you into position where you can look into the red light. This light is your focal point to help you not move your head. They use a clamp to hold your eyelids open (one eye at a time ofcourse). In order to cut open the flap of cornea, this suction thing (actual medical term) comes down onto your eye and sucks up the cornea just enough to give a nice clean cut and lessen the risk of cutting too deep into the eye. When the cornea is being sucked everything goes black. This was the most painful part for me. This part lasts all of 15 seconds. When that flap is removed everything is very, very blurry, but you can still see the red dot. The laser then does it's work to reshape your eye. Oddly enough smell was not as bad as I thought it would be. If you start to feel any pain or discomfort during any part of this entire procedure they immediately put more drops in your eye. I had my procedure done with the most recent laser out there which is more precise and moves with the movement of your eye to give a precise and accurate cut the first time around. My eyesight was so bad (20/800) that without the new laser I would have had to do the procedure twice to get my vision to 20/20. The new laser did that in one session. Anyway, after the laser does it's job, they lay down the flap, take the clamps off your eyelids and off you go. They put these plastic eye cups over your eyes so you don't rub or accidentally hit it. You must wear these at night for about a week. They also give you the big, huge sunglasses, because your eyes are very sensitive to light. So, that is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God.
Actually, most of those problems are associated with old-style RK (which makes much larger incisions in the eye) rather than current laser surgeries, which do experience these problems but at a frequency of maybe 1% when performed by experienced doctors. It is legal to fly a private plane after surgery, and it was recently allowed by revised Navy pilot standards too- night landings on aircraft carriers and all. I'd expect the FAA and the Air Force to follow suit relatively soon as the procedures continue to improve. Myself, I'm content to wait a few years until it's perfected.