What’s the best age for vision correction surgery?

The biggest reason for having vision correction surgery is having an eyeglass prescription that keeps changing. As a result, many younger people think they aren’t candidates. However, the fact that your prescription keeps changing doesn’t necessarily mean your eye itself is changing. Often a prescription will change due to the focusing muscle working harder. With the advanced diagnostics we use during your free initial consultation, we can neutralize factors like the focusing muscle’s effort to get a true picture of what’s happening with your eye. As it turns out, many people under the age of 35 make great candidates for vision correction surgery and are thrilled that they don’t have to wait until “a certain age” to get out of their glasses or contacts.

Can it fix my reading vision?

Yes! Vision correction surgery using lasers and artificial lenses both have the capacity to give you clear, quality distance and near vision without glasses or contacts. If you aren’t convinced, go back and read the previous sentence again.

Can it fix astigmatism?

While laser vision correction surgery and artificial lens surgeries of the past couldn’t correct astigmatism, technology has advanced to the point where we can happily answer this question with a resounding yes!

Will it last forever?

“Forever” is such a tricky word. Depending on your age and other factors, the answer could be yes or no. A person’s eyes undergo two dramatic changes in life– a loss of near vision around age 40 and cataracts during the senior years. After lengthy diagnostics on your eyes and considering your age, we’ll discuss with you what you can expect from which type of vision correction surgery and help you choose the one that makes the most sense. We’ll only recommend vision correction surgery if it promises to offer you fantastic vision from “many years” to “forever.”

Will it hurt?

Most patients describe eye surgery as painless and comfortable. We use anesthetic drops to numb the nerves in your eye, so you will not feel pain during the procedure. After surgery, some patients describe a feeling somewhat like having an eyelash in their eye. If you have a lot of anxiety about discomfort during eye surgery, you’ll likely come out the other end surprised at how easy and painless it was!

Will I be awake or asleep?

It’s hard to convince the guy on the street just how anticlimactic today’s eye procedures are. Most of our patients are awake and alert for the ten minutes or so it takes to perform an eye procedure, and afterwards remark about how easy it was. About one in ten patients who are very anxious will benefit from a mild sedative taken beforehand. If you are very concerned, we invite you to discuss your concerns with the doctor during your free consultation. Your comfort and ease are very important to us, and we will do our best to make sure you are comfortable during every part of your experience.

How long will the procedure take?

All of our procedures take approximately 10 minutes. For laser procedures, the laser portion takes about 10 seconds.

What is recovery like?

Our LASIK patients are back to their regular activities the same day. Lens procedures like ICL and IOL result in one or two days of recovery time. Advanced Surface Ablation (ASA) has the longest recovery time, with blurry vision and an “eyelash in the eye” sensation lasting about three days.

What are the risks?

All surgery comes with risk, but luckily this type of surgery carries very, very little risk of complication or poor outcome. People most fear losing their vision or having their vision become worse. This would only happen if an infection occurred, but this is so rare we have never seen it in our practice. A second concern for patients would be having to have a second surgery if the first did not provide maximum results. For LASIK patients, this risk is very low (as low as one per cent). For some IOL patients it might be as high as fifteen per cent. Since different surgeries carry different risks for different types of patients, it is best to discuss the particulars of your case with the doctor during your consultation so you don’t worry needlessly.