Well, if this topic’s been covered here, I hope someone will direct me toward it.
If not, here goes:
Has anyone out there had Laser Vision Correction?
How long ago?
Your opinion.
If you haven’t, why not?
I haven’t, I’m not sure if I should. I’m badly near-sighted, wearing glasses since age 11 (I’m 40 now), currently wearing bifoculs. I’m an artist, a fine art photographer and printer, and I do custom picture framing. All of which require my vision to be good.
I’d like to hear pros and cons.
I have to go out now, but I’ll checkback later.
Thanks.
If it jams, force it; if it breaks, it needed replacing anyway.
I looked at it myself-problem for me was: the doctor that I saw for a consultation wore glasses. And, his honest recommendation was-“even if the chance of anything going wrong is less than parts per million-it is NOT worth the risk-you only have ONE set of eyes”. I thought about it and decided to keep my specs.
It doesn’t sound like your vision is too great to start with. My roommate and I had this conversation the other day. There are several Lasik sites on the net describing the procedure and the risks. I personally know several people who have undergone the procedure and have yet to hear even a hint of dissatisfaction. The roommate did mention one guy that was in the news whose near sight has been permanently ruined. Still one in millions is acceptable to me. Hell, most practitioners charge per eye. Just get one done at a time. If the first one gets messed up, don’t get the other worked on.
I’m only waiting to get my finances in order during which time the cost of the procedure should come down also. Additionally, the Lasik procedure is not that old so the longer ya’ wait, the more long-term impact info you’ll have to work with before making the final decision.
Freedom: Twenty years from now, people with bad vision will be weeded out minutes after conception while still in the dish.
This probably isn’t a GD thread.
“What can I say, I luuuvv my condiments”, - inertiacakes
The attitude that “Even one chance in millions is too risky” is silly. We take million-to-one chances with our eyes every day. If you wear contacts, you are putting your eyes at significant risk of corneal abrasions, infections, etc.
I wore contacts for years. The first ophthamologist that fitted me screwed up and gave me contacts that were too tight. As a result, I have permanent scarring just outside of my cornea (luckily, it doesn’t affect my vision), and I have a series of blood vessels that grew permanently due to my eyes not getting enough oxygen. So now I have slightly bloodshot eyes all the time.
If you currently wear contacts, I think the risks associated with Lasik surgery are on par with continuing to wear contacts, especially if you’re in the habit of wearing them longer than you should, and/or occasionally falling asleep in them.
I’ve been thinking about getting the surgery for a long time now. It finally looks like it’s safe enough for the risks to be reasonable. And the price has dropped to the point where you can get both eyes done for $999 Canadian. I understand it’s still more expensive in the U.S., but $999 comes close to the price I pay for a good set of glasses and a year’s worth of contacts.
As soon as my current glasses come close to requiring replacement I’m planning on doing the laser surgery instead. Maybe sometime this year.
The topic came up just a few weeks ago. I tried to perform a search for it, but the search engine doesn’t seem to be responding at the moment.
I had it done a month ago, and I’m a poster boy for how great it is when everything goes right. I went from 20/200 with astigmatism to 20/20 without astigmatism.
I had it done last April, and I love it. I had worn glass or contacts since second grade (I’m now almost 17 years out of law school … .). I had “monovision” correction, where one eye is corrected for reading distance and the other is corrected for long distance, and this way I won’t need reading glasses for a long, long time. It took just a little while to get used to that.
I went to work the next day, driving myself there.
Not cheap, and not covered by insurance. It was $4600 for me (I hear it’s cheaper elsewhere, but whattaya want, I live in Southern California – and there was a well-known television actor there having the surgery the same day I was, and it was worth every penny. We went up to the Delta this summer, rented a houseboat, and had a blast, and for the first time I could play in the water with the kids and SEE THEM without worrying about my contacts or my glasses.
I was quite nervous about it too. I chose a surgeon with LOTS of experience, and I had one eye done at a time – when it was healed and resolved then we did the other one.
My husband is now thinking about getting it done next year. I guess I, too, am a poster child for the procedure.
Well thanks for the information and shared experience. It is awfully expensive, but I understand the cost will be coming down because the doctors performing it (Lasik surgery, at least) won’t have to pay as high a royalty for each operation. Huh, imagine that. Royalties on a surgical procedure. Still, four grand per eye is a lot, and I’m still not sure if I should do it.
If it jams, force it; if it breaks, it needed replacing anyway.
After my success with trapanning myself, I might try to tackle Lasik also. I’m kidding, I’m a kidder.
Sam:
Is it really that inexpensive in Canada? Wow!!! Maybe I’ll vacation in Canada and while I’m there have it done. The last price I got for it (last week) they were still asking $2400/eyeball. Where did you see it for that?
I am curious about the type of procedures that were done… I thought that there were different techniques. One way (read about it)was that the laser does its stuff directly into your eye, another way I saw (some medical show) was where they shaved off a micro-thin layer of your cornea, hit that with the laser,(not directly in the eye itself) and then placed it back on your eye where it healed for what seemed to be like a permanent contact lens. The latter procedure allowed for a much faster healing time, and seemed safer. For those of you that have done it, how was it done? Does anyone know of other procedures?
“Wow! Spider-Man! Are you really friends with the X-men?” "Not since Cyclops tried to use my viewmaster."
(Marvel Team Up #1)
Do you remember the scene in Logan’s Run where Logan is strapped to this plastic surgeon’s operating table, and this huge ominous octopus-looking gizmo lowers into place above his head, and the doctor flips a switch and this big ol’ nasty laser beam shoots out from one of the gizmo’s arms and burns a cut into Logan’s cheek?
And then remember how the doctor goes crazy and sets the laser gizmo to go berserk, and all these wild deadly beams start buzzing across the table top with Logan on it? And then Logan gets in a struggle with the doctor and forces him back onto the table, and all the lasers instantly carve the doctor up into lunch meat?
That’s why not.
The truth, as always, is more complicated than that.
The most common procedure these days is the “flap & zap”. That’s where they first make an almost-complete circular incision in the surface of your eye around around the corneal area (think of drawing a “C” around the lens), then lift the newly-freed surface and fold it over by the flap, then use a laser to reshape the surface of the now-exposed corneal lens (that’s the “zap” part), then put the original surface of your eye back over the lens.
When I had my eyes done, I asked the doctor what kind of surgery would be common in ten years or so when my daughters would be likely to want their eyes done. He told me that they’re working on new lasers that can reshape the the corneal lens without requiring that the outer surface of your eye be removed first - IE, a zap without the flap. He told me that this would be both faster and safer (and thus cheaper) than the current procedure. (Most of the time in the current procedure is actually removing and replacing the surface of your eye - the actual laser-reshaping takes only 15 seconds or so. The doctor told me that most of the problems that occur with the current procedure are due to improper healing of that surface cut.)
However, the doctor thought it would be a good ten years before this new process would pass the normal federal regulation process.
Actually, the most common procedure (excimer laser) zaps the eyeball without making any cuts at all. The problem with this technique is that since the outer surface of the skin is damaged, it takes a long time to heal, during which your vision will be constantly changing.
The newest technique that is all the rage (the ‘flap and zap’) is called LASIK. The primary benefit is that all laser shaping is done to tissue that is re-covered by the ‘flap’, so there is no scarring and normal vision can be achieved within a few days. The biggest single risk in LASIK surgery is that the doctor will screw up and cut the flap completely off, requiring surgical reattachment. The other risk is that the flap will shift while mending and heal off-center, requiring another surgical procedure to correct it.
Other risks of LASIK surgery are infection, and having permanent halos around point sources of light at night. The former is the risk you take with any surgery, and the latter happens to people who’s corneas are too large for the procedure. The doctor is supposed to screen for that, but apparently some don’t do as good a job as they should.
I posted about this the last time it came up, but I’ll throw in my two cents again.
I had LASIK done in Dec. '98, and went from 20/800 in one eye, 20/1200 in the other to 20/35 and 20/40. I had a “touch-up” in July '99 and am now 20/15 and 20/20. I have not had any real problems, which might be somewhat anomalous for someone with such a bad prescription to start with.
I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to find a reputable place to have it done, preferably with a surgeon who has done many, many procedures. Just the name “flap and zap” makes the procedure sound like a no-brainer, and I know of half a dozen fly-by-night type “laser vision correction” centers which have popped up. I have heard of unsatisfactory results emerging from such places.
It sounds scary, but if you get a doctor who knows what he or she is doing, it really isn’t. It is undoubtedly expensive, but since I was wearing hard contacts before and having to replace those fairly often, I think the costs balanced out for me.