> The results [of a previous study], published in October 2014, showed that some patients developed problems that adversely affected their day-to-day lives, such as difficulty driving at night or in sunshine. But it was such a small number — less than 1 percent — of the patients in the study.
> On Wednesday, the group released a follow-up report in JAMA Ophthalmology that provides more sobering information. The study suggests that the percentage of people who undergo LASIK and wind up with new visual symptoms — such as double images, glare, halos or starbursts — may be much higher.
> One interesting component of this study was that the survey showed that the percentage of people with symptoms may be much higher than what has been previously reported in studies involving direct interviews with health-care professionals.
I had it done nearly 10 years ago and ever since, my eyes are much more sensitive to light and I do see halos around lights at night. That said, I'd still have it done again without a second thought - the benefits for me far outweigh those drawbacks.
Agree, I did mine around 8 years ago, and I have halos around street lights when driving at night. I'm absolutely still glad I did it, and I would do it again if/when my eyes ever get worse someday.
I've seen halos for as long as I can remember. Never had any eye surgery of any kind, and doctors tell me my eyes are fine. It's kind of annoying, but no big deal.
As someone with LASIK, I'm not actually sure what these mean.... My gut reaction to reading this is, "Wait... do I have those?"
That being said, I do think its fair to say that we haven't studied the potential side effects of LASIK as much as you'd like to, but the fact remains that in doing so, you are accepting that there are risks.
If the risks aren't worth it to you to remove your eye impairments, then don't get LASIK?
Yea, I had Lasek ( although from what i understand, there's even quite a bit of variations of what is defined as "lasek").
Local Dr in NYC is a huge proponent of it, and well, went for it. ( he's unfortunately known for his "odd personality traits", but as a doctor, he's top notch... )
re: recovery, I think 3 weeks was the time I felt OK enough, and better than i ever did with contacts/glasses. It definitely was a months long recovery.
The most painful week of my life was the week following PRK. Constant scratching and burning in my eyes. In the end my vision never came in properly. I have halos and slightly blurry vision, but the experience (almost a decade ago) was so painful that I refuse to get it fixed. Hugely regret it.
Well, the first one is they really recommend you don't open your eyes as much as possible for 3-4 days. Coupled with a dark living space and darkest glasses you can as well. It made it so i needed someone helping me do even basic things for those days, and listening to music and podcast kinda gets pretty boring after the first day.
The rest of the days were just blurry vision and general "pain". If you've ever wore contacts for too long, it's the burning sensation you get after you take them off, multiplied.
After those were mostly gone, then I was pretty sensitive to light, and for the later weeks, I had the problem of my vision being way too sharp, so I had trouble focusing.
I ended up getting PRK in August 2015. Recovery was a pain (nearly a week before I could mostly do normal things), but within 3 months I was at 20/15 in both eyes.
The halos and "starbursts" around lights have faded somewhat, but are still present, after over a year. I was assured throughout and after the process that they would fade away completely. There's definitely a bit of misinformation around that; not sure if the doctors were deliberately misleading me, or if they were also misled by previous studies that showed a much lower incidence of side-effects.
Fortunately the dryness did fade after a month or so, and I don't need to carry around eye drops like so many others do.
Overall, though, I'm happy with the result and still glad I did it.
About 7 or 8 years ago now, my wife and I did a ton of research into this. She had gotten the go-ahead from her eye doctor to get this treatment (apparently, they want your vision to stabilize before giving the all-clear). We knew about many of the LASIK drawbacks, and she had heard first-hand accounts of the flap coming loose and halos.
We decided that PRK was the best option, as it presented the fewest potential side effects. It also helped that she was able to take the time off work for the recovery. Many years on, we still maintain that it was the best money we've spent. Her life without glasses and contacts is so much better, and she doesn't have any long-term side effects to worry about.
I really do recommend PRK strongly to anybody who is considering LASIK.
Ditto, today I'm 1 year to the day after my PRK surgery. The only side effect I had was dry-eye, and man is it a pain. I can't ride my bike without some form of eye protection (sunglasses, or clear goggles). 2-3 times per week I wake up with severely, painfully dry eyes.
All that said, it was worth it and I wouldn't go back. Being able to see without glasses/contacts is a huge improvement on quality of life.
Part of me wishes the same, but then I remember all the advantages of having no contacts or glasses and I know it's worth it. Carrying around eye drops isn't that much of a hassle, and the dry eye usually is just more uncomfortable than painful. It's only an issue when there's a lot of wind shear.
I had PRK because my cornea was too thin to get LASIK. Yeah, the healing wasn't fun (for me, it was really bad for about 3 days).
A few very minor vision artifacts, but by far the most annoying side effect has been dry eyes. I don't know how PRK caused this, but it started right afterwards. If I don't drink a lot of water before bed, I will wake up with dry and highly irritated eyes.
Even so, I still consider it worth it. I lost/broke my glasses frequently, and contacts are not very versatile.
High five for PRK. One month in, I was 20/15 and had zero perceptible problems.
But... I used lubricant eye drops religiously during that month. I went through several bottles, putting drops in my eyes several times an hour. I also took omega 3 supplements, which help tears remain intact over the epithelium longer. I read some studies that suggest omega 3s shorten the reepitheialization period significantly.
So, if you're prepared to do some work and take slavish care of your eyes for an extended healing period, I believe you can have great results from PRK. Absolutely no regrets.
What do you expect when a laser cuts into your eye?
Joke aside, I'd like to know not just that these things happen but if the person who is experiencing these issues is more or less happy compared to before the corrective laser eye surgery. There are always potential complications to surgery but often times the outcome, including the complications, are positive for the patient. I know one person who needs to rest their eyes as it gets later in the evening/night because their eye apparently swells or is noticeably more difficult to focus due to the way the surgery happens but is generally okay otherwise (my understanding is that the laser cuts a flap under the iris or some part of the eye near the pupil and that cut may not always heal properly, leading to various issues).
> What do you expect when a laser cuts into your eye?
Technically, it's a femtosecond laser that's sculpting the surface of the lens of your eye using ablation (i.e. pulse of laser light disintegrates an area the diameter of laser).
A "3d scan" of your eye (tomography) done prior to surgery is done while sitting to create the surgical plan. But the lasik procedure is performed while laying down. And since the shape of your eye is a lot like a water balloon... the shape of your eye changes between sitting and standing.
A more accurate surgical plan / tomographic profile could (in theory) lead to better patient outcome simply by having both procedures done while standing.
> I'd like to know not just that these things happen but if the person who is experiencing these issues is more or less happy compared to before the corrective laser eye surgery.
I had PRK done a few years ago (my prescription was too strong and my eyes dilated too widely for LASIK). Before I had that done, I had a strong astigmatism and nearsighted in both eyes. It was bad enough that it was "surgeon's discretion" whether or not to perform the procedure - the ophthalmologist doing all of the prep visits warned me several times that the surgeon may refuse when he reviewed the file.
I've got almost all of the lingering issues the article mentions, plus a few more. The most annoying is a muscle-memory tendency to "hyperfocus" when I look at objects at certain depths of field, like my eyes used to do in order to compensate for the nearsightedness. It's usually imperceptible as it corrects itself immediately, but it stumps autorefractor machines and the eye muscle fatigue causes headaches.
I'd still get it done in a heartbeat. My alternative was a world of semi-clarity that had a ~2ft radius around myself, that very rapidly devolved into a world of multi-colored blobs as the world around me blended together. Without glasses, I couldn't see or do much of anything; I had them on from the moment I woke up to the moment I went to sleep. The ever present anxiety of "does doing that risk my glasses/contacts" (particularly anything water or beach related) and "do I have enough backups" was stressful. Stress that I didn't even notice until, about 3 months after my surgery, I realized I hadn't so much as thought about my vision for weeks. I just took it for granted I could see stuff. Sometimes I'd see it with halos, sometimes I'd see it with a bit of glare, but I could damn well see it.
In HN speak: Think of glasses/contacts as a critical external dependency to your system, one which you have no control over. If it goes down your whole stack goes down until it comes back. Your entire system will be exhaustively and defensively designed to ensure the stability of that dependency. You're so busy protecting that dependency that you never get around to adding new features that might, possibly, somehow cause that dependency to go down. LASIK/PRK gets rid of that external dependency at the cost of a few mild (but known) exceptions that you may have to handle.
Results may vary. But I had it about 10 years ago and while the glare/halos are noticeable (especially at night) they're a very minor thing. Would still have done it.
Tell me about it. I'm stunned what a hugely amateurish pastime lasik turned out to be. One of my eyes was an entire diopter out and had to be reworked. I get nasty kinda splodges at night (a mere halo would be delightful). And had someone told me my view of the night sky would be ruined forever I might've thought differently about it.
I got LASIK as soon as I could pay for it after getting a decent software job out of school. Found contacts pretty annoying and wasn't interested in wearing glasses full-time. I think it was a holdover insecurity from childhood, associating glasses with being a 'nerd' -- I had worn them since 2nd grade. By the end of college I still didn't like the way my glasses looked on me and avoided wearing them whenever possible.
It's been a few years since the surgery now. The side effects are minor. My night vision has degraded somewhat: halos around lights can make depth-perception while driving slightly difficult, and I can't distinguish shapes in the dark as well. Not a big deal, mostly just slightly annoying when camping.
But I now realize that I miscalculated. I've become somewhat more fashion-conscious since college and now see that it would have been much easier and more cost-effective to actually find some glasses that made me look good. If I knew what I knew now about 'looking decent' I wouldn't have done it.
> The side effects are minor: my night vision has degraded somewhat: halos around lights can make depth-perception while driving slightly difficult, and I can't distinguish shapes in the dark as well. Not a big deal, mostly just slightly annoying when camping.
Strange, I have those same side effects from getting older! That happens to everybody with age.
I look forward to the day that I can stick some stem cells in a vat, come back in a month or two, and have some brand-new eyeballs.
I had this exact same feeling whenever I wore glasses. Just suddenly feeling nerdy.
Then I got one of those round, cool-looking glasses that really go with the shape and my face, and it changed everything. I love wearing glasses now. (Btw. they are Ace and Tate, the European Warby parker.)
So, finding glasses that you absolutely love is crucial.
PS: I also have a nerdy pair for coding, they are weightless and super comfy for computer. Don't feel confident in them though.
I'm past school and haven't had LASIK, but am still thinking seriously about it. I wore contacts for awhile, but have been sticking to glasses for the past few years.
I don't mind the fashion part, but wearing glasses (or contacts) gets really annoying with anything to do with water--swimming or even rain. I'm also a bit paranoid I'm going to lose or break them when travelling or camping (I should buy a backup). I find dirty lenses distracting and it's a huge pain to keep glasses clean. I also find using SLR cameras annoying. I can adjust the diopter to get it in focus, but I have to take my glasses off when I hold it to my face.
I guess the grass is always greener on the other side.
Indeed. I blame having to wear glasses since primary school for my general dislike of sports. And all the VR gear I ever tested is not compatible with glasses (also weird to use without). Even watching 3D movies in cinemas is... tricky.
Oh yes! I can't believe I neglected that. I often work on VR project at work. Prior to that I often worked in stereoscopic film which had the same problem.
Really, add anything that involves eye protection. E.g. shooting sports or hunting. Protective prescription eyewear for those is rather uncomfortable - due to the shape of the glasses themselves, the lenses are usually inserts, and have to be put in an awkward location where they're very close to the eyes.
I used to hate getting new glasses when I was a kid. But now that I'm an adult with my own income and health insurance, I just go get the exact same frame with the exact same lenses from the same manufacturer, but with an updated prescription every two or three years. Once I found something I liked it was much easier to keep wearing the glasses.
I've been wearing glasses for my horrible vision since early grade school and now well into my 30s. I don't know why anyone would wear them if there is an option not to. They constantly smudge, fog, awful in any weather situation, etc. I carry a microfiber cloth with me at all times just to be able to clean them. What a nightmare. It's fine if you wear non-refractive glasses as a fashion accessory because those can just be taken off when inconvenient. When you can't drive or barely walk without them, it's another story.
I've been wearing glasses since I was an infant. I'm used to them so they aren't that bad. Contacts are a huge pain in the ass and I can't see as well with contacts as I can with glasses. It took me 20+ years to find a pair that actually look good on me (odd face size) so I treasure them now and I bought four pairs of them so I don't ever have to worry about it again. As a bonus I've found out I can sleep in them comfortably.
So the only time I ever take off my glasses is in the shower.
As an aside I always wondered how they are able to measure an infant's vision before they can really communicate.
They measure infants (and adults for that matter) by measuring the eye. The whole "which is better" routine is just a personal preference thing. There are a couple of startups in here in Boston that strap a VR looking thing to your head and that tells you your prescription.
Apply a cycloplegic such as atropine to the eye to force the eye muscles to relax and focus as far away as possible. Then use a retinoscope to shine light on the retina and observe it while adjusting lenses over the eye.
Thanks for the information! Are you an opthalmologist by any chance?
As far as babies being able to communicate in other ways, my mom noticed that it seemed like I was having trouble with vision well before I could talk, that's how I ended up in the opthalmologist's office in the first place. :)
I'm not an ophthalmologist but I did a lot of reading and talking to optometrists when I couldn't quite get a prescription I liked. It was one of the tests I considered.
For what it's worth I solved my own issue by insisting on a slightly stronger prescription (-0.25) for my myopia. It's well worth a try, especially for driving at night. The easiest way to tell if it would help is if green traffic lights look significantly blurrier than than red traffic lights in the distance.
This is what drove me to use contacts full-time. It was so frustrating keeping my glasses clean. They'd smudge, and I'd clean them, and it wouldn't be all gone, and I'd clean them some more, and then it would be OK for a bit, and then I'd get something on them, and....
I decided not to go with LASIK just because it doesn't seem worth the tradeoff. Contacts take me about thirty seconds per day to insert and remove, not a big deal. Just making up the LASIK recovery period would take a long time. Plus the risk of permanent side-effects. Contacts have those too, but it can be substantially mitigated by using them properly (always washing hands, never sleeping in them, always changing them at the appropriate time, etc.).
I totally understand why people might see the tradeoffs differently, of course.
contacts irritated my eyes if I wore them for more than 12 hours. I'd have to decide if I was going to go out in the evening or not, and if so, I'd wear glasses during the day. If I wore them more than 12 hours, I'd have to wear glasses for the next few days because of the irritation. Don't get me started on what happened if I fell asleep with them in my eyes.
the last 4 or so years before lasik I mostly wore glasses except for special occasions where I'd wear contacts.
I had to try many brands. Finally found one I can wear 18 hours a day. Hard to think of a benefit to Lasik. Maybe open water swimming I fear losing a contact, but has never happened yet.
i wore contacts up until age 26 or so when they became unbearable due to dryness and worsening astigmatism. optometrist told me the same happens to a lot of people. I can handle certain brands of dailies for about 4 hrs but just way more hassle than glasses.
2. Uncomfortable, pinches nose, laying down on side with them on.
Also: Modification of scale of things. Makes things smaller the further they are from my eyes. Not a big deal, but I always feel kind of satisfied when I go back to contacts because of accuracy of perception. I suppose if I can get glasses with thinner material this might be less of an issue.
Keeping them clean and smudge free isn't that big of a deal for me, I just wipe them with my shirt, and normally it's not bad enough to bother me. Fogging is slightly annoying I suppose, but goes away quick.
I also seemed to have an ever-increasing strength of prescription. The last time I had them checked was in 2010, and my optometrist changed my brand from Coopervision to Acuvue because I was refusing to take mine off at night, and the Oasis is supposed to be more meant for that. I then had two bouts of some sort of pink eye (after nights of heavy drinking, but still didn't happen with my Coopervision even then), and also in general my eyes would feel drier in them. They had these slits that would become uncomfortable fairly quickly.
I switched back to my old Coopervision prescription from 2008 or 2009 and they have been working fine for me. From my own anecdotal experience, it's my theory that the constant stronger prescriptions are what makes your eyes worse. I've also heard anecdotes from other people about them just stopping wearing eye correction and their eyes get better.
You are a perfect case study for why anecdotal evidence is categorically useless. More than a century of carefully studied evidence still hasn't managed to squash this way of thinking.
>>> I also seemed to have an ever-increasing strength of prescription.
I have a hunch that optometrists tend to slightly overprescribe the strength. Every time I would get a new prescription, I would walk out with superhuman vision, but than after a few days my eyes would adjust. At my last visit to the optometrist, I actually requested a lower strength and they obliged. And while I might have to squint here and there to read something really far away, I spend a good chunk of my time in front of computer, so I prefer the lower strength.
And I agree on increasing your eye strength as well. I try to take off my glasses frequently, and I have noticed that if I go for a while without them, my vision seems a little better when I put them back on. Also there are some apps that help as well [1]
My vision is good enough that I can drive without glasses. I still wear them almost constantly because they're a comfortable thing, to the degree that a slight increase in my visual acuity is worth the minor inconveniences. They help me not to strain while reading small text, and I don't feel like the surgery would be worth it for me, so I wear them.
This post here is my life. I've had glasses for basically as long as I can remember and I hate them. I don't feel comfortable touching my eyes and stuff for contacts though so I reckon laser eye surgery is probably an option for me, maybe in five to ten years.
p.s. disposable wipes with rubbing alcohol are great for keeping them clean (although terrible for the environment), and getting a non-reflective coating definitely helps keep the effects of the smudging to a minimum.
Glasses are amazing. They help me see better and they make my face look like my face. Been wearing them since I was 7 or 8. 29 now, no regrets, never want to get away from glasses.
I clean them with a t-shirt when smudges happen to impede vision. Happens only when somebody pokes them with a finger. If your pillow is soft enough, you can even lie down on them and the glasses are just fine. They don't care, they just bend a bit.
No weird shit to put in your eyes. Take them off whenever they annoy you. Change your entire face every few years when buying a new pair. That's always exciting.
I guess I'm lucky that I can do sports and such without glasses. Means I can just take them off when they'd get in the way. Same for fogging when I transition from cold to warm. Take them off, carry on.
My doctors always said I should avoid wearing glasses 24/7 because something about eye laziness, but I am much more comfortable when the world isn't blurry. So I wear them 24/7 except for certain sports and sleep.
People do wear glasses for many reasons (in addition to correcting vision).
- Some think glasses look good
- Glasses protect the eyes from wind, rain and flying particles
Yes, the glasses do get foggy and smudgy. But when riding a bike, they shield the eyes. Also, at the age of 50, I've had several eyeglass lenses scratched by things like a piece of metal or stone flying off an angle grinder, or dust/sand blown by a pneumatic nailgun. Without glasses, the same things would have hit my eyes.
I think that there are better tools for that, however, such as activity specific goggles. Glasses you need to have to see, everything else you can take off if you need to or are done with the activity.
Yes, activity specific goggles have their strong points. My eyeglasses have the strong point that they're always there. Even when I'd forgotten the specific goggles.
In my experience, they shield the eyes from sand and small debris, but they also tunnel the wind in from the top and bottom with more force, resulting in constantly flowing tears if going at any decent biking speed. I always hated riding with glasses because of that, especially as the tears would end up staining the glasses and making it harder to see.
Hmm, that likely depends on the shape of the glasses, and possibly the shape of face, and riding position. I have tried riding with contacts and find that I feel much better with my glasses.
When it rains (particularly -0°C water) the glasses are indeed quite difficult to see through, but then the eyes would be very irritated too.
Depends on the glasses. These days, I always ride with glasses, but they're cheap safety glasses, not corrective lenses of any kind. Safety glasses are made specifically to protect your eyes from flying debris, so theoretically they're safer if a big rock flies into your eye or something. But they also are shaped to fit closer to your face, so I don't have any problems with the wind-tunnel effect you complain about. Best of all, they keep the wind out of my eyes, which is a problem at speed.
Now if I could just find something comfortable to block out all the wind noise.
That's why they invented "safety glasses". They're specifically designed to protect against stuff like that, probably better than your expensive corrective lenses, and they're dirt cheap. They're required wear in any hazardous environment (factory, workshop, etc.).
When I was a kid, I really wanted glasses because I thought they looked cool. My vision was 20/10 and 20/15 all through school.
Finally, when I was about 27, I broke down and got glasses as I noticed my vision was slipping.
I can still walk around and drive without them. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and do some on-call work for 20min while squinting at the screen. I can spend a few hours walking around the house without them.
But I never leave home without them, and I never drive or work without them, and I never take them off. I simply don't see the problems you see; yes, they get dirty, i clean them perhaps once a week. I don't smudge them because I'm careful not to.
I still rather quite like them and the way they look. I have no desire to poke my fingers into my eyes or get lasers shot into them.
I'm sure you could argue that it's different for me because I don't have to wear them to see, but it's really not that different -- I wear them every minute of every waking day except those extraordinarily rare days I mention.
It helps that I go out of my way to get glasses I like. I have a few pair of colorful titanium and carbon fiber frames. Yes, it's a bit painful to spend $600+ every year or two, but worth it to have something I like the look of.
Maybe you should be thankful. The option to not wear glasses is way too convenient. My eyes are unprotected from UV and impact. I might remember when operating a chainsaw or pouring sulfuric acid, but that's about it. Operating a circular saw or pouring bug killer without any protection is too damn convenient.
I have great vision, but sometimes wear polarized sunglasses when driving especially at night to cut down on glare. You might want to try the same thing.
There are special polarized glasses for night driving. They are not blackened. When someone goes towards you with unregulated headlight which blinds you, it really helps.
The danger with that is not seeing a deer that's about to bolt in front of you on the road. And in an urban environment, it's easy to not see a pedestrian who is wearing dark clothes.
We all second guess ourselves. The long term impacts of lasik are not fully known yet. It may turn-out to be just fine over the long haul. Don't beat yourself up too much.
Let me start by saying that I only have minor vision issues, primarily from astigmatism ("my skull squeezing my eyes into an unnatural shape"). My correction in each eye is < -2.00, I think one of them is -1.25.
I see fine for most purposes. Thankfully, it's nearsightedness, which means I do not need any correction to work on computers (this is obviously a biggie). I use retina displays at higher-than-default simulated resolution (i.e. smaller everything) w/ no issue.
I tried contacts when I used to play soccer because you can't wear glasses due to safety concerns (for yourself). They were fine, but I have a natural dislike for putting things anywhere in/on my body unless absolutely necessary, and just the though of putting something in my eyes repulses me. I only wore them when I played, and would wear glasses by choice any other time.
For the most part, I see pretty well w/o correction -- I wear glasses because I really, really enjoy the sense of vision and want it to be as crystal clear as possible in order to experience it to its fullest. When I moved to California and I passed the driver's lic vision test w/o glasses, which surprised even me. I still wear them every time I drive, because again, not just for safety, but I really enjoy seeing as clear as my sensors (eyes) can resolve - it's a signal-to-noise/quality concern.
I never once thought about not wearing glasses because of how they look. If that's a concern, there's so much choice out there these days that there's a style for everyone. I prefer as small and light as possible so I wear half wire frame in flexible titanium. I mostly put them on when I drive, but, and this is a big but:
ProTip: You can/should get corrected permanent sunglasses! These are the best thing since before, and after, sliced bread! I do happen to have more sensitive than average eyes, but I'm never outside w/o my permanent Rx sunglasses. You can get really good/cool looking ones, I'm into sports so I wear a sporty frame. Not a concern to me, but "nobody knows" they are actually vision glasses too during the day. I then wear the clear ones at night/when watching TV or a performance, anytime I want to see maximally clear, particularly at a distance. Believe it or not, this is not that much, for example I don't need them at a dinner party.
On LASIK: until such a time that my vision requires major correction I'm not even considering it. The system I've developed works really well for me, and I think if and when I will need it the technology, and potentially solutions, will be superior at that point.
I know, now, that there are glasses that work for basically anyone out there. In college I couldn't find them. It never occurred to me to look in places besides the optometrist's store. It never even occurred to me that my self-identify was compatible with wearing 'trendy' glasses (in this case, squarish and maybe colored plastic frames instead of thin round metallic ones).
I've found frames that complement my face since getting LASIK. Sometimes I wear them ironically to parties.
I just got custom wavefront LASIK done at Stanford, and I'm very happy with the procedure.
Yes, I see halos at night, but they are "there" -- they don't bother me at all. If anything, it's like the overused HDR bloom effect in video games in 2005. I can still see and drive perfectly fine at night.
They're also going away. It's been a week since my procedure, and they have been going away every day. It can take 3-6 months for vision to stabilize.
I didn't want to wear glasses, and now I don't, and I'm happy.
That sort of happens when first wearing glasses, too. I think it's like an unsharp mask filter applied by the brain to compensate for blurriness, which it has to unlearn over time.
I wonder how this compares to similar, but different procedures. I had PRK done 7 years ago, and it was probably the best $4000 I ever spent. It went perfect for me - no new issues. However, I did it one eye at a time, just in case!
PRK differs from LASIK in how the top layer of the cornea is removed. In LASIK, a flap is cut and peeled back, then put back in place at the end of the procedure. In PRK, the top layer is scraped off and has to grow back in, a process that takes several weeks and can be somewhat painful.
Somewhat painful? Try the most miserable four days of my life (not sure where several weeks came from but mine only took four days).
I had LASIK in one eye and PRK in the other (not as any sort of test, there were medical reasons, I would have preferred to have LASIK in both). The LASIK eye took roughly four hours to heal to point of no discomfort and the PRK eye took four days. My PRK eye sees about 20/15, and my LASIK eye sees about 20/20.
I would 100% do it all over again if given the choice.
I'm really interested to understand which of these have just had spherical correction models applied (ie non-wavefront).
Given that most of these in the article are higher order effects, it only makes sense that if you simply ignore higher order error, you get bad results.
My dad had been just letting his cataracts go, since he's the stereotypical stubborn person who doesn't like to go to the doctor till it's too late. So, one morning he woke up and panicked because he was effectively blind.
He somehow managed to get a hold of my sister (I was away from home; she lived in the same neighborhood luckily) who helped him get an appointment for LASIK. Long story short, he ended up with nearly 20/20 vision afterwards.
My Dad says shit that he makes up in his own head by reinterpreting what others have told him and I just believe him without bothering to verify unless I know it's incorrect; and even then sometimes I just don't bother.
For instance, in this case he probably saw or heard the term LASIK so much by advertising that it just stuck in his head and he glazed over whatever the doctors were telling him when he went in, and he's been repeating that same thing ever since. I believed him, because I don't have eye problems and was never curious enough to look further.
What your dad got is an IOL: intraocular lens. These things are pretty amazing these days; they can correct myopia and astigmatism, eliminate cataracts, and eliminate the need for reading glasses too because the new lens is focus-able (in the ones that are "accommodating"). I'm thinking of getting these in 5-10 years, since I'm just starting to have problems with reading now; by that time, new artificial lenses will be a perfect solution to my eyesight problems I can expect to have at that age.
Your dad sounds like one of these annoying non-technical people who hears one technical term (e.g. LASIK) and then applies that in blanket fashion to anything remotely related. He probably calls Android phones "iPhones", and he probably calls laptop computers "iPads", and he probably calls the Internet "AOL".
Reports of this, and having a friend suffer from similar effects after laser eye surgery years ago, have always kept this as a "look again in a few years" thing for me.
As I've aged, my prescription has got stronger (I'm long sighted), and I've realised these effects can be caused by stronger spectacles too. Long term contact lens use can also commonly cause symptoms.
With hindsight I wish I'd just gone ahead in my 20s or 30s!
I got Lasik about 7-8 years ago and they said I could have issues described in the article for several months and in some cases it could affect your night vision for a few years (which it did). The symptoms subsided over a few years. My vision is now awesome. Were other people warned of these potential (temporary) issues?
I had a great outcome, dare I say ideal? Knock on wood...
I got Wavefront LASIK more than a year ago and it feels like I was born with perfect vision -- I seriously have no side effects. Seriously, what are halos? I couldn't describe it to you even if I tried. The first few months were pretty dry (to the point where I had headaches) but that eventually subsided. If you're in the market for LASIK and actually do your due diligence, it's pretty common to see people who are dealing with side effects. My advice is to (1) don't cheap out and feel comfortable with your doctor, and (2) adopt a healthy lifestyle to let your eyes heal.
LASIK was one of the best investments I've ever made. I think most people who've had the procedure will say the same.
This is me. I had LASIK in a highly rated surgery in London about 18 months ago where the care and after care was exceptional. I had halos for about 1 month after, but that was it. My eyes were dry for a week or two, but again they soon went back to normal (I recommend Blink drops - amazing). I was left with 20/12 vision and couldn't recommend having it done more.
I got my eyes fixed with LASIK a while back. I noticed glare and halos for a while, but they subsided. Overall I've been very satisfied with the how it went. I wish that more medical procedures worked this way.
I've never had a medical procedure work like this. The office was transparent and prompt about everything. Every other encounter with the U.S. medical system I've had has been a confusing mess.
When I first visited the office they went over why I might not want to do the procedure.
Once they confirmed I was still interested, they did human and machine measurements and tests of my eyes, and showed me the results and told me what they meant. They took care to explain their error correction procedures.
After they'd done their tests they told me what the procedure would cost and scheduled it right away They explained what I'd need to do after the procedure (eye drops and followup visits) and what that would cost.
The day of, they saw me promptly. They did more verification, and then the procedure. They made sure I understood my instructions for post-op care (correcting my misunderstanding about some eye drops).
The procedure cost what they said it would, and at each followup appointment I was seen promptly and kept in the loop about my status.
LASIK is purely mechanical and generally well-understood and the improvement is directly measurable and involves applying a particular fix and then you're done.
Dentistry can be like that too. As can some orthopedic stuff like setting a broken bone or replacing a hip. But most of the rest of medicine isn't like that.
Suppose you have high blood pressure or low blood pressure or balance issues or cancer or joint pain or acid reflux or arthritis or a lack of energy or are overweight. Doctors can give advice and prescribe treatment for any of those but most of it doesn't work very well. The best case might involve continuously taking pills and changing behavior for the entire rest of your life. There's very little where the doctor says "just do this one thing, let me turn this knob over here, and you're all better." In a lot of cases they can't even tell what's wrong, much less how to fix it, much less precisely how much it's going to cost to fix it.
In large part because LASIK is optional and usually not covered by insurance, it tends to be a FAR better experience than most other medicine. The pipeline is ridiculously optimized to make the operation fast and efficient and cheap and transparent. It would be awesome to have the equivalent of LASIK centers for every other kind of medicine, rather than the sort of confuseopoly we've got.
I had LASIK i 2013. This was right after I got new job.
I took the most expensive option because I didnt want to risk my eye because of few pennies.
Outcome: I could see perfectly day after. I had halo during nights but this gradually faded away to something insignificant.
I cant speak for all people, and I cant comment on how this will end up in 5 or 10 years but I am really happy I did this.
I used to wear contact lenses that went dry after half a day. If I spent the day out I had to bring with me couple of pair of lenses + 1 more for safety. Why so many? Some lenses no matter how I try to fit on my eye just glided down and fell. I used to spend 5-10 minutes every morning just to get them to fit. It was such an daily obstacle.
Aircon blowing from the car? Lens dry.
Now I dont even think about the LASIK surgery or lenses. I just moved on with life
I have -7.5 and -8 on my L/R eyes and I've considered LASIK multiple times growing up (got my glasses when I was ~3 yrs).
But recently (After getting a job), I've grown less and less attached to the procedure and don't intend to have it in the foreseeable future. (complications and side effects make me feel that what I have right now it is not too bad).
I had custom LASIK done about 7 years ago where they cut the "flap" with a laser. After a month my vision stabilized but it was still not good enough, so they did a second "touch up" operation. I've had great vision ever since.
I even had an injury to my eye where a tree branch came full force into my eye, and there was no damage to the "flap".
I have had very little if any glare or halos symptoms.
Given this, in hindsight I would probably go with PRK because it seems to give the eye more structural integrity and possible more post-operation options?
In speaking to an opthamologist recently, she mentioned that lense implants are her preferred choice.
Although I had PRK done the first time(2010). I havejust had it done a 2nd time this week for 1 eye.
I didn't know this until recently, but apparently PRK is the only option if its been 1+ year since your first surgery (regardless of what your first time was).
I never liked the idea of the flap, so among many reasons, I had gone with the option without a flap the first time.
I had surgery with my first salary more or less when I was 21.
It took a year or two for the halo effects to disappear.
My night vision feels like it's like "4x" worse than it it was but it is really hard to tell. Seeing in the dark is difficult in the first place and I don't have any hard data.
If LASIK involved a 1/10,000 chance of losing ten thousand dollars, would you do it? How about hundred thousand? One million? I would probably stop here - would wan't to be in one million debt.
So what's functioning eyesight worth to you? Because to me it's more than $1m, more than billion, more than all the money in the world. I wouldn't risk it even if there was one failed case to millions.
Anyway, this is my setup:
1. Contacts for sports/social activities
2. Lightweight glasses for work (like Snowden in his iconic photo). Don't like to wear this in social setting. I would feel nerdy.
3. Fashionable round glasses with that spotted texture. Can't get used to the plastic glasses, so I don't wear them a whole lot, but no problem wearing them in social setting.
Contacts aren't risk-free either. By choosing to wear them over glasses for sports and social activities, you're making the same basic choice, perhaps with different numbers. (I say this as one who chose contacts over surgery, and I use them exclusively, no glasses.)
I have similar setup. For contacts I use "Dailys". They are more expensive but lesser risk of infection. And these workout almost cheaper for those who use contacts occasionally.
Not with proper use. General recommendation is to wear contacts for 10, sometimes 12 hours in a 24 hour period and use supplemental glasses for the rest. Also clean them daily and well.
Sleeping in contacts is also a big no-no.
Wouldn't be surprised if there's a decent amount of anecdata that people don't really adhere to the guidelines.
Yes! Many people seem to miss this for whatever reason. There is no risk-free choice if you are unlucky enough to have poor eyesight.
Personal anecdote: I have a retinal scar from an eye infection that was a direct result of wearing contacts. The $2K I spent on LASIK in my early twenties was the best money I've ever spent.
I did a good amount of research and came to the conclusion that the expected value of LASIK outweighed that of contacts over a lifetime. To simplify things a bit, you are trading a one-time risk of a serious post-surgery complication for a risk of a contact-caused eye infection spread out over the remaining years of your life.
I was evaluated for wavefront LASIK at the Stanford Eye Laser Center and I asked the doctor there specifically about this, because like you I wondered whether LASIK would be lower-risk than wearing contacts for the rest of my life. He said that conditioned on the fact that I had already worn contacts continually for several years without any problems, it probably wasn't true that continuing to wear contacts was a higher risk than LASIK. (I might have gotten LASIK anyway, but it turned out that I have unusually large pupils, which ups the likelihood of bad side effects.)
Contacts seem way more dangerous. Eyes are immune privileged, a dirty contact lens can lead to a rapidly growing infection with permanent loss of visual acuity in a matter of days. That is the short term; in the long term, the reduced oxygen supply to your eyes may lead to excessive ingrowth of blood vessels into the cornea. They are permanent and can obscure vision once you accrue enough of them.
You're assuming that losing a $10,000 bet is the same as experiencing some side affects years after having Lasik. It's not that clear-cut - you don't go blind. A fairer comparison might be a $10,000 bet only paying out $9,000, but while you play you get free drinks and a show, so maybe the trade-off is worth it.
I had Lasik about ten years ago. I just didn't like the inconvenience of glasses and contacts and taking them on/off all day when switching from a screen to driving/walking and back was straining.
I went in understanding that there was a risk night vision degradation in the future. But really, I'd likely have experienced that with age anyway.
To this day LASIK is the best money I've ever spent. I've got near-perfect vision and have since taken up many activities (flying, cycling, motorcycling) that, while they can be done with glasses, are much, much more convenient without them.
You are lucky you can use contacts. I honestly don't know if I would have had a corrective surgery if I could use contacts. My eyes are, however, so dry that I never found a brand of contacts that would stay in my eye for more than 2 hours. After that, the eye would be so dry that I would blink them out.
The quality of eyesight isn't binary, though. The chance of total blindness from LASIK is, what?
My dad is professor of ophthalmology and a practicing MD. I got LASIK done (by one of his partners) several years ago and it was the best health-related decision I've ever made.
I was on contacts before. The thing most people don't understand about contacts is that they also carry some risk and constant contact use can lead to major complications even if you follow all best practices regarding hygiene. That, to me, is much more scary than seeing halos around lights or slightly decreased night vision quality.
The worth of generally improved eyesight will vary substantially person to person, as evidenced by these comments. Short term risk and long term risk according to patient outcomes seems to vary according to the article.
A more holistic assessment of risk might include an answer to this question: what percent of doctors performing PRK or LASIK have undergone the procedure themselves?
That's an interesting question, but I don't know if it really applies. As an example, how much is it worth for you to get a cup of coffee? Depending on your mode of transportation, or the temperature of the coffee, there is risk. There's risk in everything, which is what you're getting at I think.
Odds of dying in a car accident are 1/606 but I assume you don't avoid transportation. There's a 1/1,700 chance you'll die from dealing from steps. I assume you don't also avoid those.
I had PRK done because the idea of LASIK freaked me out more and there were more side effects. The procedure feels pretty benign although there is a long healing time. I assume that most of the problems occur because people don't take proper post-surgery care.
First, I agree with your assessment of the risks and I do intend to consider surgery if my myopia worsens enough to justify it.
However, I don't think it works to compare the odds here. People accept the dangers of traveling by road vehicles because it's drastically superior to the alternatives. If there were an option that was less convenient/more annoying than a car, but just as fast, almost as flexible, and much safer (glasses/contacts vs surgery)... I think a lot of people would take it. (I realise this is not a perfect analogy.)
Secondly- and I realise this sounds a bit dramatic, and quite insensitive towards blind people- but I would not want to live my life without vision. If I get smashed by a truck and killed, that sucks but I'm probably not going to have to deal with it for long. If I go blind, that's something I have to deal with for the rest of my life and which prevents me from doing almost everything I enjoy doing.
I do accept that people don't tend to judge risk in a rational way. A plane crash is a much scarier concept than a car crash, even though it happens far less often, because
* plane crashes involve many people at once
* they are far more likely to be fatal when they do occur
* in some cases you will know you are doomed to crash many minutes before you actually do
* a passenger has zero control over that situation
BUT, despite this, most of us happily accept air travel because it's vastly better than any alternative.
The benefits of eye surgery, in most cases and for many people, are far more marginal than the advantage a car or plane gives you. I would therefore say it's quite rational for someone to decide it's not worth the risk.
Those risk numbers aren't really valid for everyone, for all activities. The steps thing, for instance, is BS for most people; steps are a serious danger, of course, to elderly people, which is why the mortality number is so high for them. For healthy adults under retirement age, the risk isn't remotely as high.
Similarly, your risk of dying from getting hit by an asteroid are actually pretty significant according to some sources. Do you know how many people in history have actually died from an asteroid strike? Probably zero, at least in the last couple millenia, and almost certainly zero in the last century. But the risk is still pretty high because if a giant earth-killer asteroid hits the planet, we're all dead, or a city-killer asteroid could cause massive devastation. A small one hit a Russian city a few years ago and 1000 people were injured.
So you have to take some of these with a grain of salt. Car accidents, like the steps thing, probably also affect different places differently. Cars are much more deadly in some 3rd-world nations, for instance; does that 1/606 statistic include those? And death rates per mile traveled are probably higher in some places than others (rural vs. urban). And they're also probably higher for drunk drivers (though obviously the drunks do kill innocent people too), and possibly lower for small children (because they're better protected in car seats).
My optometrist confirmed what I've worried about for decades. We are finally at a point where there are older people who had LASIK 20+ years ago and it's not good. It complicates cataracts. It's also less effective to start with for people over 40. Glad I never got it. But then I had a thought. Since I'm past the age where my lens has hardened - can't focus up close - I asked if I could just get cataract surgery NOW. He said yes, and the lenses won't get cloudy later and I might never need glasses again. I asked about focus up close and he says there are some magical progressive lenses they can use - I'm not sure how that works and neither was he. Only problems: 1) It's 5K per eye and not covered by any insurance because its cosmetic. I think that's well worth the price. but 2) I have astigmatism which can be corrected but they have to get the lens within a couple degrees of the correct rotational angle or you'll need glasses anyway. He said there's about a 2-4 percent chance of that even with the best guy doing it.
I splurged and spent 7200 on possibly the most reputable place in the area, and they took great care of me.
The best advantages for me is that I can just wake up and go, and I can buy sunglasses/safety glasses easily, without spending lots of money on custom lenses. Plus when I wake up, I can just look around and figure out what time it is.
I don't really see downsides here, I'm sure that other people have worse experiences, but my experience has been a) don't skimp and b) be happy.
I have worn contacts 7 days a week for over 20 years, can't stand wearing glasses.
Modern daily disposable contact lenses are so easy, probably takes me total of no more than 25 seconds a day to deal with them and once they are in I have great vision and cannot feel them at all. I literally cannot tell whether I am wearing them other than the fact I can see properly.
Last time I did the math on LASIK the cost was equivalent to about 5 years worth of lenses. The convenience and flexibility of lenses outweighs the risks of LASIK for me.
There is a new D2C company out there called Hubble. They don't offer custom base curve or correction for astigmatism, but I was able to get one year's worth for $265.
I wear modern dailies (1-Day Acuvue Moist) and it costs me under $500/yr, and that's not including the discounts I get from my insurance.
I couldn't believe the positive impact dailies have had on my life - I can't even tell I'm wearing contacts, my dry eye is all but gone, and allergy season is now bearable to me. Even if it was $1k/yr, paying $3/day for perfect eyesight with no discomfort or hassle is still an absolute no brainer.
I would personally recommend a trial for sleep-in contacts. I did so through my optometrist, firstly wearing them as dailies for a week. Then, after an optometrist inspection, leaving them in for one night, followed by another inspection. Finally, I was to sleep in them for a week (or perhaps five days, I forget) followed by another inspection. This final inspection showed that I had developed an eye ulcer during the final phase of the trial, which I had experienced as a very mild irritation. Luckily, there have been no longer lasting side effects.
>> The study analyzed outcomes for two groups of LASIK patients. In the first group, which included 262 Navy personnel with an average age of 29.1, it was 43 percent reporting new symptoms.
I'm in the middle of a multi-year application process for a job in the armed forces. They are VERY suspicious of all laser eye surgeries. I had several tests specifically looking for evidence of surgery. They didn't find any, but they did find a tiny scar in my cornea left over from when I was a teenager. My point: think long and hard about laser eye surgery if there is any change that you may want to work with or for any armed service. You cannot hide these procedures.
Flip side: If they implement a draft, lasik might get you a pass.
(1) G-forces. But it isn't just airmen, or people jumping out of planes. The 'flap' procedures leave a scar in the cornea. That scar is a weak point. Any impact, even being punched in the face, can crack along that weak point. They have seen a few of these over the decades. For pilots, the word is that flap procedures could see you limited to rotary-wing aircraft rather than jets. (50+% of military cockpits are in helicopters. It isn't that great a limitation unless you have TopGun dreams.)
(2) Future correction. Pilots cost upwards of 5mil to train. Maybe in 5/10 years your eyes aren't good enough any more and they want to send you for corrective surgery then. They want to know where they are starting.
(3) Catching cheats. There are a huge number of questions re eyes. They want to fish out anyone who may be fibbing about their medical history. A liar is worse than any medical condition. Basically, if you are caught you will be blacklisted for all the services.
Lol. That's what happens after hours of worried discussion amongst candidates at a military medical facility. Lots of information based on shared stories and fleeting comments by doctors in camo. Everyone wants to chat so as to confirm their understandings.
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 248 ms ] thread> The results [of a previous study], published in October 2014, showed that some patients developed problems that adversely affected their day-to-day lives, such as difficulty driving at night or in sunshine. But it was such a small number — less than 1 percent — of the patients in the study.
> On Wednesday, the group released a follow-up report in JAMA Ophthalmology that provides more sobering information. The study suggests that the percentage of people who undergo LASIK and wind up with new visual symptoms — such as double images, glare, halos or starbursts — may be much higher.
> One interesting component of this study was that the survey showed that the percentage of people with symptoms may be much higher than what has been previously reported in studies involving direct interviews with health-care professionals.
Wish I knew what caused it though.
As someone with LASIK, I'm not actually sure what these mean.... My gut reaction to reading this is, "Wait... do I have those?"
That being said, I do think its fair to say that we haven't studied the potential side effects of LASIK as much as you'd like to, but the fact remains that in doing so, you are accepting that there are risks.
If the risks aren't worth it to you to remove your eye impairments, then don't get LASIK?
Erm... obviously. Hence why it's important to run studies like this to understand what the risks are.
It was a "fun" 3 weeks of healing ( versus 1-2 days for lasik ), but PRK based procedures have substantially less of these side effects.
edited: to note that i had lasek done.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photorefractive_keratectomy
EDIT: did you get PRK or Lasek?
Local Dr in NYC is a huge proponent of it, and well, went for it. ( he's unfortunately known for his "odd personality traits", but as a doctor, he's top notch... )
re: recovery, I think 3 weeks was the time I felt OK enough, and better than i ever did with contacts/glasses. It definitely was a months long recovery.
The rest of the days were just blurry vision and general "pain". If you've ever wore contacts for too long, it's the burning sensation you get after you take them off, multiplied.
After those were mostly gone, then I was pretty sensitive to light, and for the later weeks, I had the problem of my vision being way too sharp, so I had trouble focusing.
But I would do it again in a heartbeat!
The halos and "starbursts" around lights have faded somewhat, but are still present, after over a year. I was assured throughout and after the process that they would fade away completely. There's definitely a bit of misinformation around that; not sure if the doctors were deliberately misleading me, or if they were also misled by previous studies that showed a much lower incidence of side-effects.
Fortunately the dryness did fade after a month or so, and I don't need to carry around eye drops like so many others do.
Overall, though, I'm happy with the result and still glad I did it.
We decided that PRK was the best option, as it presented the fewest potential side effects. It also helped that she was able to take the time off work for the recovery. Many years on, we still maintain that it was the best money we've spent. Her life without glasses and contacts is so much better, and she doesn't have any long-term side effects to worry about.
I really do recommend PRK strongly to anybody who is considering LASIK.
Artificial tear eye drops help a lot, but sometimes I have to use them twice per day.
All that said, it was worth it and I wouldn't go back. Being able to see without glasses/contacts is a huge improvement on quality of life.
+1 for PRK over Lasik
A few very minor vision artifacts, but by far the most annoying side effect has been dry eyes. I don't know how PRK caused this, but it started right afterwards. If I don't drink a lot of water before bed, I will wake up with dry and highly irritated eyes.
Even so, I still consider it worth it. I lost/broke my glasses frequently, and contacts are not very versatile.
But... I used lubricant eye drops religiously during that month. I went through several bottles, putting drops in my eyes several times an hour. I also took omega 3 supplements, which help tears remain intact over the epithelium longer. I read some studies that suggest omega 3s shorten the reepitheialization period significantly.
So, if you're prepared to do some work and take slavish care of your eyes for an extended healing period, I believe you can have great results from PRK. Absolutely no regrets.
Joke aside, I'd like to know not just that these things happen but if the person who is experiencing these issues is more or less happy compared to before the corrective laser eye surgery. There are always potential complications to surgery but often times the outcome, including the complications, are positive for the patient. I know one person who needs to rest their eyes as it gets later in the evening/night because their eye apparently swells or is noticeably more difficult to focus due to the way the surgery happens but is generally okay otherwise (my understanding is that the laser cuts a flap under the iris or some part of the eye near the pupil and that cut may not always heal properly, leading to various issues).
Technically, it's a femtosecond laser that's sculpting the surface of the lens of your eye using ablation (i.e. pulse of laser light disintegrates an area the diameter of laser).
A "3d scan" of your eye (tomography) done prior to surgery is done while sitting to create the surgical plan. But the lasik procedure is performed while laying down. And since the shape of your eye is a lot like a water balloon... the shape of your eye changes between sitting and standing.
A more accurate surgical plan / tomographic profile could (in theory) lead to better patient outcome simply by having both procedures done while standing.
Cornea, not lens. And it's not the surface. It's the area under the flap which is mechanically cut.
I had PRK done a few years ago (my prescription was too strong and my eyes dilated too widely for LASIK). Before I had that done, I had a strong astigmatism and nearsighted in both eyes. It was bad enough that it was "surgeon's discretion" whether or not to perform the procedure - the ophthalmologist doing all of the prep visits warned me several times that the surgeon may refuse when he reviewed the file.
I've got almost all of the lingering issues the article mentions, plus a few more. The most annoying is a muscle-memory tendency to "hyperfocus" when I look at objects at certain depths of field, like my eyes used to do in order to compensate for the nearsightedness. It's usually imperceptible as it corrects itself immediately, but it stumps autorefractor machines and the eye muscle fatigue causes headaches.
I'd still get it done in a heartbeat. My alternative was a world of semi-clarity that had a ~2ft radius around myself, that very rapidly devolved into a world of multi-colored blobs as the world around me blended together. Without glasses, I couldn't see or do much of anything; I had them on from the moment I woke up to the moment I went to sleep. The ever present anxiety of "does doing that risk my glasses/contacts" (particularly anything water or beach related) and "do I have enough backups" was stressful. Stress that I didn't even notice until, about 3 months after my surgery, I realized I hadn't so much as thought about my vision for weeks. I just took it for granted I could see stuff. Sometimes I'd see it with halos, sometimes I'd see it with a bit of glare, but I could damn well see it.
In HN speak: Think of glasses/contacts as a critical external dependency to your system, one which you have no control over. If it goes down your whole stack goes down until it comes back. Your entire system will be exhaustively and defensively designed to ensure the stability of that dependency. You're so busy protecting that dependency that you never get around to adding new features that might, possibly, somehow cause that dependency to go down. LASIK/PRK gets rid of that external dependency at the cost of a few mild (but known) exceptions that you may have to handle.
tl;dr: 10/10 would do it again
Due to halos around celestial objects? I've never thought about that aspect and is a very good point.
It's been a few years since the surgery now. The side effects are minor. My night vision has degraded somewhat: halos around lights can make depth-perception while driving slightly difficult, and I can't distinguish shapes in the dark as well. Not a big deal, mostly just slightly annoying when camping.
But I now realize that I miscalculated. I've become somewhat more fashion-conscious since college and now see that it would have been much easier and more cost-effective to actually find some glasses that made me look good. If I knew what I knew now about 'looking decent' I wouldn't have done it.
Strange, I have those same side effects from getting older! That happens to everybody with age.
I look forward to the day that I can stick some stem cells in a vat, come back in a month or two, and have some brand-new eyeballs.
Then I got one of those round, cool-looking glasses that really go with the shape and my face, and it changed everything. I love wearing glasses now. (Btw. they are Ace and Tate, the European Warby parker.)
So, finding glasses that you absolutely love is crucial.
PS: I also have a nerdy pair for coding, they are weightless and super comfy for computer. Don't feel confident in them though.
I don't mind the fashion part, but wearing glasses (or contacts) gets really annoying with anything to do with water--swimming or even rain. I'm also a bit paranoid I'm going to lose or break them when travelling or camping (I should buy a backup). I find dirty lenses distracting and it's a huge pain to keep glasses clean. I also find using SLR cameras annoying. I can adjust the diopter to get it in focus, but I have to take my glasses off when I hold it to my face.
I guess the grass is always greener on the other side.
Add sports in general and VR goggles to that list
Definitely has downsides. Smudging and fogging is so frustrating, but I've gotten used to it.
Glasses have some upsides too. For instance when it's windy, they're a shield that makes you less likely to have unwanted things get into your eye :)
So the only time I ever take off my glasses is in the shower.
As an aside I always wondered how they are able to measure an infant's vision before they can really communicate.
I remember colored lights being involved in eye exams when I was very, very, very young... But that may be a false memory, it's hard to really know.
And of course slightly older babies have ways of communicating without words! https://youtube.com/watch?v=84-Cuc-Tz2o
As far as babies being able to communicate in other ways, my mom noticed that it seemed like I was having trouble with vision well before I could talk, that's how I ended up in the opthalmologist's office in the first place. :)
For what it's worth I solved my own issue by insisting on a slightly stronger prescription (-0.25) for my myopia. It's well worth a try, especially for driving at night. The easiest way to tell if it would help is if green traffic lights look significantly blurrier than than red traffic lights in the distance.
I decided not to go with LASIK just because it doesn't seem worth the tradeoff. Contacts take me about thirty seconds per day to insert and remove, not a big deal. Just making up the LASIK recovery period would take a long time. Plus the risk of permanent side-effects. Contacts have those too, but it can be substantially mitigated by using them properly (always washing hands, never sleeping in them, always changing them at the appropriate time, etc.).
I totally understand why people might see the tradeoffs differently, of course.
the last 4 or so years before lasik I mostly wore glasses except for special occasions where I'd wear contacts.
What has your post-lasik experience been like?
1. Peripheral, especially when driving.
2. Uncomfortable, pinches nose, laying down on side with them on.
Also: Modification of scale of things. Makes things smaller the further they are from my eyes. Not a big deal, but I always feel kind of satisfied when I go back to contacts because of accuracy of perception. I suppose if I can get glasses with thinner material this might be less of an issue.
Keeping them clean and smudge free isn't that big of a deal for me, I just wipe them with my shirt, and normally it's not bad enough to bother me. Fogging is slightly annoying I suppose, but goes away quick.
I also seemed to have an ever-increasing strength of prescription. The last time I had them checked was in 2010, and my optometrist changed my brand from Coopervision to Acuvue because I was refusing to take mine off at night, and the Oasis is supposed to be more meant for that. I then had two bouts of some sort of pink eye (after nights of heavy drinking, but still didn't happen with my Coopervision even then), and also in general my eyes would feel drier in them. They had these slits that would become uncomfortable fairly quickly.
I switched back to my old Coopervision prescription from 2008 or 2009 and they have been working fine for me. From my own anecdotal experience, it's my theory that the constant stronger prescriptions are what makes your eyes worse. I've also heard anecdotes from other people about them just stopping wearing eye correction and their eyes get better.
I have a hunch that optometrists tend to slightly overprescribe the strength. Every time I would get a new prescription, I would walk out with superhuman vision, but than after a few days my eyes would adjust. At my last visit to the optometrist, I actually requested a lower strength and they obliged. And while I might have to squint here and there to read something really far away, I spend a good chunk of my time in front of computer, so I prefer the lower strength.
And I agree on increasing your eye strength as well. I try to take off my glasses frequently, and I have noticed that if I go for a while without them, my vision seems a little better when I put them back on. Also there are some apps that help as well [1]
[1] Came across this link on HN a while back: https://github.com/Fordi/eyegame
LASIK recovery is just 2 days or so - PRK can be 2 weeks
p.s. disposable wipes with rubbing alcohol are great for keeping them clean (although terrible for the environment), and getting a non-reflective coating definitely helps keep the effects of the smudging to a minimum.
Do it now. When you're older (40 or so) you're going to need glasses for driving/reading anyway
I clean them with a t-shirt when smudges happen to impede vision. Happens only when somebody pokes them with a finger. If your pillow is soft enough, you can even lie down on them and the glasses are just fine. They don't care, they just bend a bit.
No weird shit to put in your eyes. Take them off whenever they annoy you. Change your entire face every few years when buying a new pair. That's always exciting.
I guess I'm lucky that I can do sports and such without glasses. Means I can just take them off when they'd get in the way. Same for fogging when I transition from cold to warm. Take them off, carry on.
My doctors always said I should avoid wearing glasses 24/7 because something about eye laziness, but I am much more comfortable when the world isn't blurry. So I wear them 24/7 except for certain sports and sleep.
<3 glasses
Yes, my face looks weird without my glasses, the overall shape is very different!
I dunk my glasses into my cleaner every morning while I'm showering.
THANKS
- Some think glasses look good - Glasses protect the eyes from wind, rain and flying particles
Yes, the glasses do get foggy and smudgy. But when riding a bike, they shield the eyes. Also, at the age of 50, I've had several eyeglass lenses scratched by things like a piece of metal or stone flying off an angle grinder, or dust/sand blown by a pneumatic nailgun. Without glasses, the same things would have hit my eyes.
> But when riding a bike, they shield the eyes.
In my experience, they shield the eyes from sand and small debris, but they also tunnel the wind in from the top and bottom with more force, resulting in constantly flowing tears if going at any decent biking speed. I always hated riding with glasses because of that, especially as the tears would end up staining the glasses and making it harder to see.
When it rains (particularly -0°C water) the glasses are indeed quite difficult to see through, but then the eyes would be very irritated too.
Now if I could just find something comfortable to block out all the wind noise.
Finally, when I was about 27, I broke down and got glasses as I noticed my vision was slipping.
I can still walk around and drive without them. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and do some on-call work for 20min while squinting at the screen. I can spend a few hours walking around the house without them.
But I never leave home without them, and I never drive or work without them, and I never take them off. I simply don't see the problems you see; yes, they get dirty, i clean them perhaps once a week. I don't smudge them because I'm careful not to.
I still rather quite like them and the way they look. I have no desire to poke my fingers into my eyes or get lasers shot into them.
I'm sure you could argue that it's different for me because I don't have to wear them to see, but it's really not that different -- I wear them every minute of every waking day except those extraordinarily rare days I mention.
It helps that I go out of my way to get glasses I like. I have a few pair of colorful titanium and carbon fiber frames. Yes, it's a bit painful to spend $600+ every year or two, but worth it to have something I like the look of.
This is why the (British, at least) military isn't keen on it...
So, it can actually be much easier to see someone with dark clothing when I have sunglasses on.
I see fine for most purposes. Thankfully, it's nearsightedness, which means I do not need any correction to work on computers (this is obviously a biggie). I use retina displays at higher-than-default simulated resolution (i.e. smaller everything) w/ no issue.
I tried contacts when I used to play soccer because you can't wear glasses due to safety concerns (for yourself). They were fine, but I have a natural dislike for putting things anywhere in/on my body unless absolutely necessary, and just the though of putting something in my eyes repulses me. I only wore them when I played, and would wear glasses by choice any other time.
For the most part, I see pretty well w/o correction -- I wear glasses because I really, really enjoy the sense of vision and want it to be as crystal clear as possible in order to experience it to its fullest. When I moved to California and I passed the driver's lic vision test w/o glasses, which surprised even me. I still wear them every time I drive, because again, not just for safety, but I really enjoy seeing as clear as my sensors (eyes) can resolve - it's a signal-to-noise/quality concern.
I never once thought about not wearing glasses because of how they look. If that's a concern, there's so much choice out there these days that there's a style for everyone. I prefer as small and light as possible so I wear half wire frame in flexible titanium. I mostly put them on when I drive, but, and this is a big but:
ProTip: You can/should get corrected permanent sunglasses! These are the best thing since before, and after, sliced bread! I do happen to have more sensitive than average eyes, but I'm never outside w/o my permanent Rx sunglasses. You can get really good/cool looking ones, I'm into sports so I wear a sporty frame. Not a concern to me, but "nobody knows" they are actually vision glasses too during the day. I then wear the clear ones at night/when watching TV or a performance, anytime I want to see maximally clear, particularly at a distance. Believe it or not, this is not that much, for example I don't need them at a dinner party.
On LASIK: until such a time that my vision requires major correction I'm not even considering it. The system I've developed works really well for me, and I think if and when I will need it the technology, and potentially solutions, will be superior at that point.
I've found frames that complement my face since getting LASIK. Sometimes I wear them ironically to parties.
Yes, I see halos at night, but they are "there" -- they don't bother me at all. If anything, it's like the overused HDR bloom effect in video games in 2005. I can still see and drive perfectly fine at night.
They're also going away. It's been a week since my procedure, and they have been going away every day. It can take 3-6 months for vision to stabilize.
I didn't want to wear glasses, and now I don't, and I'm happy.
PRK differs from LASIK in how the top layer of the cornea is removed. In LASIK, a flap is cut and peeled back, then put back in place at the end of the procedure. In PRK, the top layer is scraped off and has to grow back in, a process that takes several weeks and can be somewhat painful.
I had LASIK in one eye and PRK in the other (not as any sort of test, there were medical reasons, I would have preferred to have LASIK in both). The LASIK eye took roughly four hours to heal to point of no discomfort and the PRK eye took four days. My PRK eye sees about 20/15, and my LASIK eye sees about 20/20.
I would 100% do it all over again if given the choice.
Given that most of these in the article are higher order effects, it only makes sense that if you simply ignore higher order error, you get bad results.
My dad had been just letting his cataracts go, since he's the stereotypical stubborn person who doesn't like to go to the doctor till it's too late. So, one morning he woke up and panicked because he was effectively blind.
He somehow managed to get a hold of my sister (I was away from home; she lived in the same neighborhood luckily) who helped him get an appointment for LASIK. Long story short, he ended up with nearly 20/20 vision afterwards.
https://www.aao.org/eye-health/diseases/what-is-cataract-sur...
My Dad says shit that he makes up in his own head by reinterpreting what others have told him and I just believe him without bothering to verify unless I know it's incorrect; and even then sometimes I just don't bother.
For instance, in this case he probably saw or heard the term LASIK so much by advertising that it just stuck in his head and he glazed over whatever the doctors were telling him when he went in, and he's been repeating that same thing ever since. I believed him, because I don't have eye problems and was never curious enough to look further.
Shame on me.
Your dad sounds like one of these annoying non-technical people who hears one technical term (e.g. LASIK) and then applies that in blanket fashion to anything remotely related. He probably calls Android phones "iPhones", and he probably calls laptop computers "iPads", and he probably calls the Internet "AOL".
As I've aged, my prescription has got stronger (I'm long sighted), and I've realised these effects can be caused by stronger spectacles too. Long term contact lens use can also commonly cause symptoms.
With hindsight I wish I'd just gone ahead in my 20s or 30s!
I got Wavefront LASIK more than a year ago and it feels like I was born with perfect vision -- I seriously have no side effects. Seriously, what are halos? I couldn't describe it to you even if I tried. The first few months were pretty dry (to the point where I had headaches) but that eventually subsided. If you're in the market for LASIK and actually do your due diligence, it's pretty common to see people who are dealing with side effects. My advice is to (1) don't cheap out and feel comfortable with your doctor, and (2) adopt a healthy lifestyle to let your eyes heal.
LASIK was one of the best investments I've ever made. I think most people who've had the procedure will say the same.
My Mum and sister both had Lasik here as well (again, no problems at all) and I couldn't recommend them more.
When I first visited the office they went over why I might not want to do the procedure.
Once they confirmed I was still interested, they did human and machine measurements and tests of my eyes, and showed me the results and told me what they meant. They took care to explain their error correction procedures.
After they'd done their tests they told me what the procedure would cost and scheduled it right away They explained what I'd need to do after the procedure (eye drops and followup visits) and what that would cost.
The day of, they saw me promptly. They did more verification, and then the procedure. They made sure I understood my instructions for post-op care (correcting my misunderstanding about some eye drops).
The procedure cost what they said it would, and at each followup appointment I was seen promptly and kept in the loop about my status.
Dentistry can be like that too. As can some orthopedic stuff like setting a broken bone or replacing a hip. But most of the rest of medicine isn't like that.
Suppose you have high blood pressure or low blood pressure or balance issues or cancer or joint pain or acid reflux or arthritis or a lack of energy or are overweight. Doctors can give advice and prescribe treatment for any of those but most of it doesn't work very well. The best case might involve continuously taking pills and changing behavior for the entire rest of your life. There's very little where the doctor says "just do this one thing, let me turn this knob over here, and you're all better." In a lot of cases they can't even tell what's wrong, much less how to fix it, much less precisely how much it's going to cost to fix it.
In large part because LASIK is optional and usually not covered by insurance, it tends to be a FAR better experience than most other medicine. The pipeline is ridiculously optimized to make the operation fast and efficient and cheap and transparent. It would be awesome to have the equivalent of LASIK centers for every other kind of medicine, rather than the sort of confuseopoly we've got.
Outcome: I could see perfectly day after. I had halo during nights but this gradually faded away to something insignificant.
I cant speak for all people, and I cant comment on how this will end up in 5 or 10 years but I am really happy I did this.
I used to wear contact lenses that went dry after half a day. If I spent the day out I had to bring with me couple of pair of lenses + 1 more for safety. Why so many? Some lenses no matter how I try to fit on my eye just glided down and fell. I used to spend 5-10 minutes every morning just to get them to fit. It was such an daily obstacle.
Aircon blowing from the car? Lens dry.
Now I dont even think about the LASIK surgery or lenses. I just moved on with life
But recently (After getting a job), I've grown less and less attached to the procedure and don't intend to have it in the foreseeable future. (complications and side effects make me feel that what I have right now it is not too bad).
I even had an injury to my eye where a tree branch came full force into my eye, and there was no damage to the "flap".
I have had very little if any glare or halos symptoms.
Given this, in hindsight I would probably go with PRK because it seems to give the eye more structural integrity and possible more post-operation options?
In speaking to an opthamologist recently, she mentioned that lense implants are her preferred choice.
I didn't know this until recently, but apparently PRK is the only option if its been 1+ year since your first surgery (regardless of what your first time was).
I never liked the idea of the flap, so among many reasons, I had gone with the option without a flap the first time.
My night vision feels like it's like "4x" worse than it it was but it is really hard to tell. Seeing in the dark is difficult in the first place and I don't have any hard data.
Here's a question for you:
If LASIK involved a 1/10,000 chance of losing ten thousand dollars, would you do it? How about hundred thousand? One million? I would probably stop here - would wan't to be in one million debt.
So what's functioning eyesight worth to you? Because to me it's more than $1m, more than billion, more than all the money in the world. I wouldn't risk it even if there was one failed case to millions.
Anyway, this is my setup:
1. Contacts for sports/social activities
2. Lightweight glasses for work (like Snowden in his iconic photo). Don't like to wear this in social setting. I would feel nerdy.
3. Fashionable round glasses with that spotted texture. Can't get used to the plastic glasses, so I don't wear them a whole lot, but no problem wearing them in social setting.
I think most people just hear the good things about it and don't properly evaluate the risks. I know I didn't.
Sleeping in contacts is also a big no-no.
Wouldn't be surprised if there's a decent amount of anecdata that people don't really adhere to the guidelines.
Personal anecdote: I have a retinal scar from an eye infection that was a direct result of wearing contacts. The $2K I spent on LASIK in my early twenties was the best money I've ever spent.
I did a good amount of research and came to the conclusion that the expected value of LASIK outweighed that of contacts over a lifetime. To simplify things a bit, you are trading a one-time risk of a serious post-surgery complication for a risk of a contact-caused eye infection spread out over the remaining years of your life.
What's the risk with glasses? Losing/breaking them?
I had Lasik about ten years ago. I just didn't like the inconvenience of glasses and contacts and taking them on/off all day when switching from a screen to driving/walking and back was straining.
I went in understanding that there was a risk night vision degradation in the future. But really, I'd likely have experienced that with age anyway.
To this day LASIK is the best money I've ever spent. I've got near-perfect vision and have since taken up many activities (flying, cycling, motorcycling) that, while they can be done with glasses, are much, much more convenient without them.
But I did try getting married; definitely one of the worst decisions I ever made in my life.
Luckily there weren't any kids involved.
According to statistics, you're significantly less than 50% likely to have a happy marriage, so it's not a very good gamble.
Full disclosure: I've had LASIK three times[1].
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13025716
The quality of eyesight isn't binary, though. The chance of total blindness from LASIK is, what?
I was on contacts before. The thing most people don't understand about contacts is that they also carry some risk and constant contact use can lead to major complications even if you follow all best practices regarding hygiene. That, to me, is much more scary than seeing halos around lights or slightly decreased night vision quality.
http://www.iii.org/fact-statistic/mortality-risk
I had PRK done because the idea of LASIK freaked me out more and there were more side effects. The procedure feels pretty benign although there is a long healing time. I assume that most of the problems occur because people don't take proper post-surgery care.
However, I don't think it works to compare the odds here. People accept the dangers of traveling by road vehicles because it's drastically superior to the alternatives. If there were an option that was less convenient/more annoying than a car, but just as fast, almost as flexible, and much safer (glasses/contacts vs surgery)... I think a lot of people would take it. (I realise this is not a perfect analogy.)
Secondly- and I realise this sounds a bit dramatic, and quite insensitive towards blind people- but I would not want to live my life without vision. If I get smashed by a truck and killed, that sucks but I'm probably not going to have to deal with it for long. If I go blind, that's something I have to deal with for the rest of my life and which prevents me from doing almost everything I enjoy doing.
I do accept that people don't tend to judge risk in a rational way. A plane crash is a much scarier concept than a car crash, even though it happens far less often, because
* plane crashes involve many people at once * they are far more likely to be fatal when they do occur * in some cases you will know you are doomed to crash many minutes before you actually do * a passenger has zero control over that situation
BUT, despite this, most of us happily accept air travel because it's vastly better than any alternative.
The benefits of eye surgery, in most cases and for many people, are far more marginal than the advantage a car or plane gives you. I would therefore say it's quite rational for someone to decide it's not worth the risk.
Similarly, your risk of dying from getting hit by an asteroid are actually pretty significant according to some sources. Do you know how many people in history have actually died from an asteroid strike? Probably zero, at least in the last couple millenia, and almost certainly zero in the last century. But the risk is still pretty high because if a giant earth-killer asteroid hits the planet, we're all dead, or a city-killer asteroid could cause massive devastation. A small one hit a Russian city a few years ago and 1000 people were injured.
According to Wired, your risk of dying from an asteroid is higher than by lightning strike: https://www.wired.com/2013/02/asteroid-odds/
So you have to take some of these with a grain of salt. Car accidents, like the steps thing, probably also affect different places differently. Cars are much more deadly in some 3rd-world nations, for instance; does that 1/606 statistic include those? And death rates per mile traveled are probably higher in some places than others (rural vs. urban). And they're also probably higher for drunk drivers (though obviously the drunks do kill innocent people too), and possibly lower for small children (because they're better protected in car seats).
So it's still glasses for now.
I splurged and spent 7200 on possibly the most reputable place in the area, and they took great care of me.
The best advantages for me is that I can just wake up and go, and I can buy sunglasses/safety glasses easily, without spending lots of money on custom lenses. Plus when I wake up, I can just look around and figure out what time it is.
I don't really see downsides here, I'm sure that other people have worse experiences, but my experience has been a) don't skimp and b) be happy.
Modern daily disposable contact lenses are so easy, probably takes me total of no more than 25 seconds a day to deal with them and once they are in I have great vision and cannot feel them at all. I literally cannot tell whether I am wearing them other than the fact I can see properly.
Last time I did the math on LASIK the cost was equivalent to about 5 years worth of lenses. The convenience and flexibility of lenses outweighs the risks of LASIK for me.
IIRC LASIK is around $1500-$2300 per eye depending on which generation of technology is used.
Even without, it was 1k a year.
I couldn't believe the positive impact dailies have had on my life - I can't even tell I'm wearing contacts, my dry eye is all but gone, and allergy season is now bearable to me. Even if it was $1k/yr, paying $3/day for perfect eyesight with no discomfort or hassle is still an absolute no brainer.
I'm in the middle of a multi-year application process for a job in the armed forces. They are VERY suspicious of all laser eye surgeries. I had several tests specifically looking for evidence of surgery. They didn't find any, but they did find a tiny scar in my cornea left over from when I was a teenager. My point: think long and hard about laser eye surgery if there is any change that you may want to work with or for any armed service. You cannot hide these procedures.
Flip side: If they implement a draft, lasik might get you a pass.
(2) Future correction. Pilots cost upwards of 5mil to train. Maybe in 5/10 years your eyes aren't good enough any more and they want to send you for corrective surgery then. They want to know where they are starting.
(3) Catching cheats. There are a huge number of questions re eyes. They want to fish out anyone who may be fibbing about their medical history. A liar is worse than any medical condition. Basically, if you are caught you will be blacklisted for all the services.
Very informative