Lasix

[Michael]

Alright, I'm going to be in a situation in a few months where I can afford corrective surgery for my awful near-sidedness. I'm only 20 (less than week from 21) years old, and all I know is that I'm tired of the fuss of glasses and horrified of contacts. Can someone "in the know" explain the details of the surgery, as well as success rate if you know it.


Michael

 

[freakseam]

i don't have experience with this subject, however i strongly suggest you augment whatever responses you recieve here with doctor consultations, second opinions, and research so that you will hopefully fully understand what is entailed before, during and post surgery. also, not everyone is an acceptable candidate for the procedure, prices may vary, etc. talk with professionals. good luck.

 

[ACN_SLAVE]

I was actually thinking about getting lasix surgery, but my father refuses to pay for it. The problem is that there is still a 1-5% chance for complications, and even though those are low odds, you don't want to take them. And the other thing that bothered him was that this procedure is still pretty new, and no studies have been done on the benefits/consequences of the procedure 10+ years down the road.

If I were you, which in some ways I am with my eye sight, wait five years for further research and procedural refining to be done.

 

[Kai]

I had lasik surgery about 3 years ago. One of the best things I've ever done.

You need to get an evaluation from a doctor you can trust. Someone who can tell you if you are a good candidate or not, as opposed to a doctor who simply recommends that everyone have lasik. If you can get an unbiased evaluation, you can figure out if lasik is for you.

Some things to look at are:

Size of fully dialated pupil. Larger pupil size means more sculpting depth and width are required, and you need to make sure that the machine your doctor uses is capable of dealing with the width of your pupil. This is the cause of most night vision side effects, the fully dialated pupil is larger than the sculpted area of the cornea.

Thickness of your cornea. If you have a thin cornea, there is less for the doctor to work with, and less correction is possible. A wide pupil coupled with a thin cornea is a problem.

Curvature of your cornea. Currently, the algorithms for calculating how much to cut are determined based on ideal cornea curvature. How closely your actual curvature matches the ideal will determine how well the sculpting actually improves your vision. Soon, the formulae will be calculated on your individual curvature characteristics, but I don't think they are quite there yet. (could be wrong with this one, as I haven't checked the state of the art for some time.)

What equipment is the doctor using. Lasik is a lot like computers, with the state of the art improving very quickly. Make sure your doctor is using the latest and greatest equipment, not a 5 year old laser that he's using because he still hasn't paid off the lien on it.

Good luck.

Kai

 

[Michael]

Thanks Kai.

 

[vero_group]

Ain't nobody puttin' a laser near my eyeball, ever. I'll keep the glasses, thanks.

 

[MPS]

You really need to consult with your ophthalmologist to have these questions answered in full. It's surprisingly difficult to give (and therefore get) a straight answer about the success rate of refractive surgery. Why? Principally because there are different means of determining the outcome. For example, success can be defined as being able to read a certain line on a letter chart without glasses; alternatively you could say that anyone within +/- 1 dioptres has had a successful operation. In both instances, many of those with a "successful outcome" may still need to wear glasses. Some people find this prospect acceptable, others do not. You need to decide what you'd be happy with, and then ask the doctor what chance you have of such an outcome.

Kai has already mentioned some of the variables (though I should add that it's pretty trivial to add in a calculation to account for individual corneal curvatures). At your age, you are likely to have large pupils, and this makes it slightly harder to achieve an adequate correction. If you have a relatively high correction, then the outcome is also slightly less predictable. You should also bear in mind that your refractive error (prescription) needs to have been stable for a couple of years - the best that any surgeon can guarantee is that you'll be corrected for the refractive error you present with (they can't ensure that things won't change in the future). On the plus side, many refractive surgeons are now willing to have the technique done on themselves (which is a good sign), and there is currently no evidence to suggest that having refractive surgery adversely affects the integrity of the eyeball (i.e. ability to withstand trauma). As with any surgery, there are risks of complication. These include infection, incomplete or inaccurate correction (the risk of the latter is reduced if the surgeon's equipment has an advanced eye tracking device), spontaneous re-opening of the flap incision (very rare) and loss of corneal translucency.

Will the technique get better in the future? I think that it's likely that it will. In the last few years for example, the technique has been extended to attempt to correct some of the innate imperfections ("higher order aberrations&quot in the optics of the normal eye.

 

[mistahlee]

Here is something about which you may want to ask. Â My wife was scheduled for lasik on both eyes. Â When the surgeon began working on the right eye, the epithelium of the cornea peeled away "like the bunching up of a rug," as he later described it. Â Apparently the eyes of one person in two hundred have this propensity. Â For them it is a problem. Â In any event, the surgeon did the right eye only that day. Â My wife had to go back daily for a week, and wear a special contact lens until the cornea healed. Â Also, she wore glasses with one lens for a month. Â Later the surgeon corrected the other eye with a less advanced technique called PRK. All's well that ends well, I suppose, although she does have a condition called monovision as a result of this. Â I tell the story to point out there can be unexpected problems. Â I'm no doctor so forgive my simplistic description. By the way, isn't lasix a perfomance enhancing drug sometmes given to racehorses? Â Â