Lasik Surgery Risk - What Every Patient Should Know
Lasik surgery has helped improve the vision of millions of patients. With that being said, there are certain Lasik surgery risks you should understand before pursuing such a procedure.
In this regard, Lasik is like many other forms of surgery — sure it can help, but it also poses certain risks to patients.
So anyone considering such a procedure should learn about the most common risks of Lasik eye surgery as outlined below:
- Vision Loss — This is obviously one of the more serious risks associated with Lasik surgery procedures. Some patients actually lose lines of vision (based on the standard vision chart), and it is something that cannot be remedied by wearing glasses or contacts, or by repeat surgery.
- Vision Problems — Some patients of Lasik eye surgery develop problems with halos around objects, problems with glare, or double vision as the reduce of their surgery. These procedures have also been none to significantly reduce nighttime vision in some patients. Thus, this is another "top of the list" Lasik surgery risk you should be aware of.
- Repeated Procedures — It is common for patients to need additional treatments after the first Lasik procedure. Often, the desired vision improvement cannot be achieved during the first attempt. The problem is that repeated treatments are not always possible, so some patients undergo Lasik eye surgery with only marginal improvements in their vision. This is not so much a risk of Lasik surgery as a downside, but it's worth consideration so we have included it in this article.
- Dry Eye Syndrome — Our eyes have the fascinating ability to keep themselves lubricated by producing tears. Sometimes, however, patients of Lasik surgery lose the ability to produce tears as much as needed to keep the eyes moist. This is referred to as dry eye syndrome and it's yet another Lasik surgery risk you should be aware of. Dry eye syndrome can be permanent and can cause discomfort and blurred vision. It is usually treated with eye drops.
- No Long-Term Data — With medical treatments such as Lasik eye surgery, overall success rates are best measured over time. The more data you have to examine, the easier it is to determine general success rates, best practices, techniques to avoid, etc. But Lasik has not been around that long. The first laser for LASIK surgery was approved in 1998, so the length of practice and data collection is considered short-term. How does this factor in as a Lasik surgery risk of concern? Well, it simply means that we don't fully understand the long-term effectiveness of safety of these procedures.
Lasik Risks Versus Rewards
The point of this article is not to scare you away from Lasik eye surgery. On the contrary, it could very well improve your vision and thus your quality of life, so it's certainly worth considering. The goal of this article is simply to help you understand the Lasik eye surgery risks that all patients should understand and consider.
On this website, we try to balance the negative with positive to give you a well-rounded view of Lasik. So now that we have listed some of the risks associated with Lasik surgery we would also like to share some of the advantages of such procedures.