Anyone had laser eye surgery for myopia that can give me a heads up on it (short sighted). Cost? Anything to look out for?

just briefly what i know 40yrs and above it'll cure shotsightedness not 100% however you'll still need glasses for reading if the opposite..1-5% chance of blindness..500-800us$worth it..i'd like to have it but my optometrist is against itastigmatism my part

I had this done last year after wearing contact lenses for about 20 years. I felt as if the contact lenses were starting to irritate me when they had never done it before.

There are a few clinics around and you need to see them so that they can test your eyes to see what is suitable.

The prices seem to range from cheap to expensive, and I guess you can choose whatever risk level you are happy with. I went with one of the companies that has been around for a reasonable amount of time, but they aren't the cheapest.

I suspect that the majority of people could be treated with the cheapest company as the computer driven laser does most of the work, but in my case I thought I would go with the company that I felt most comfortable with. I avoided one clinic in Sydney as the doctor there acted as if I was stupid for asking questions. He is probably quite good, but I would rather have a doctor that makes me comfortable in his skills.

A lot will depend on your level of myopia and the thickness of your epithelium (sp?).

One thing that is difficult is that when you do a search for this stuff on the internet you find all of the negative stories, pretty much because the people that have had problems are more likely to talk about them.

There are two common procedures that they use. One is pretty much normal within a few days and the other takes months to come good.

Just make sure you read all the info they give you and make an informed decision.

Just had mine done, about 3 months ago - for windsurfing and sailing mostly.
I'm not sure I'd do it again if I could. Here's the lodown.

Both eyes are near perfect, BUT... they don't work well together. At all. I'll give it time and hope it gets better. For the time being, the good doctor retorts that both eyes are good and that the brain will get used to it. [On the latter: he probably doesn't know of all my concussions at rugby and hockey...]

The nearsightedness that comes after surgery was way underplayed - it's much more debilitating than they said. It's liveable, but most annoying.

The surgery was much more painful than they said at first. Now, maybe that particular shop tried to underplay, perhaps me a wimp, I don't know. I spoke to other people and it's 50-50 on that topic. But sure was a bad friggin' 24 hours after.

Water-wise, I can now windsurf without glasses, but I still can't read the wind the way I'd like to. It doesn't matter when just sailing straight, but freestyle or on my big boat - it's really annoying. Brain hasn't adapted yet, I guess.

Yes, research shows the bad cases, and yes, that's a tendency of many Internet researches in general. I would add 2 remarks to this.

Google FDA and independent researches in the US. The fact is that the satisfaction rate from non-Lasik researches (FDA did one, NBC I think did another one) is much lower than that of doctor-filled forms. Officially (doctor asks a question are you happy, and keeps re-asking until you say sort-of), it's at 95%. Independent surveys are at 75% (quoting from memory, research I did a few weeks ago). 75% means one full quarter regrets.

The second observations is that the cases that went bad... really went bad. These are your eyes, man. A real worry is the very long list of things that can go bad. In my case, add light sensitivity. I find myself needed sun glasses all the time now. Only good use of this is being able to watch other women when am with GF, but other than that, not good socially.

As to the $$: I've asked around and nearly all got the "your eyes are different, will cost a lot more" speech. Now I could afford, so can you, but that alone shows that there's a trend in that business.

Here was one hell of an interesting side effect: I now have very bad nights sleep. Here's why: when you wear glasses, you can't fall asleep with the glasses. You have to remove them, plan *when* you'll go to bed. Now, I just fall asleep around 9-ish... just to wake up at midnight and be up all night ! Will have to adjust, that's me.

Apologies for long post, but this is an important topic.
Cheers and good luck.

pierrec45 said...

Just had mine done, about 3 months ago - for windsurfing and sailing mostly.
I'm not sure I'd do it again if I could. Here's the lodown.

Both eyes are near perfect, BUT... they don't work well together. At all. I'll give it time and hope it gets better. For the time being, the good doctor retorts that both eyes are good and that the brain will get used to it. [On the latter: he probably doesn't know of all my concussions at rugby and hockey...]

The nearsightedness that comes after surgery was way underplayed - it's much more debilitating than they said. It's liveable, but most annoying.

The surgery was much more painful than they said at first. Now, maybe that particular shop tried to underplay, perhaps me a wimp, I don't know. I spoke to other people and it's 50-50 on that topic. But sure was a bad friggin' 24 hours after.

Yes, research shows the bad cases, and yes, that's a tendency of many Internet researches in general. I would add 2 remarks to this.

Google FDA and independent researches in the US. The fact is that the satisfaction rate from non-Lasik researches (FDA did one, NBC I think did another one) is much lower than that of doctor-filled forms. Officially (doctor asks a question are you happy, and keeps re-asking until you say sort-of), it's at 95%. Independent surveys are at 75% (quoting from memory, research I did a few weeks ago). 75% means one full quarter regrets.

The second observations is that the cases that went bad... really went bad. These are your eyes, man. A real worry is the very long list of things that can go bad. In my case, add light sensitivity. I find myself needed sun glasses all the time now. Only good use of this is being able to watch other women when am with GF, but other than that, not good socially.

As to the $$: I've asked around and nearly all got the "your eyes are different, will cost a lot more" speech. Now I could afford, so can you, but that alone shows that there's a trend in that business.

Pierre, as for the light sensitivity, I had that for the first 3 months or so. The first day after the surgery it was fine, but a few days to a week later it really hurt to expose my eyes to even normal indoor lights.

They were fine after about 3 or 4 months, but that is a long time if you can't handle the impact to your life or work for that time. Luckily I was in a job where I could.

I think you might be in that period where you are still light sensitive, but if it was like my results, it will go away.

I agree about the pain. Some people have a more intense reaction than others, but for me at least it was sometimes pretty bad, but after a few months it was rare. One procedure is done in an area of the eye that has no nerves and the other (the one I had, and probably you by the sound of it) means the eye is going to hurt and react to being damaged.

I agree 100% with the comments on the satisfaction rate of these surgeries. I expected regular consultations after the procedure, but instead it's like they take your money and run. You will only hear back from the surgeons if something goes wrong, and I suspect that they really don't have accurate statistics on what the customer goes through, as I for one have heard nothing from the clinic since I paid their bill.