Has anyone every had laser vision correction?

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RobertGonzalez
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Has anyone every had laser vision correction?

Post by RobertGonzalez »

My wife has decided that this fathers day an excellent gift from the kids to me would be laser vision correction so I don't have to wear glasses anymore. While I have had a few friends that have had the procedure I really have no one at the moment that I can bounce this off of. Except, that is, this community.

Have any of you ever had this procedure done? If so, what was your experience? Would you recommend it to anyone? More importantly, would you recommend it to me?

Any and all feedback is welcomed and appreciated.
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Luke
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Post by Luke »

That's funny I was just talking about this with my boss. I'm interested in hearing what people have to say about this too. (sorry to hijack your thread Ev) I have a question of my own. Is there a limit of how bad your vision can be? I go more and more blind every year. I can't read anything on this screen from a foot away :( My vision is EXTREMELY bad. I can't remember what my vision is, but my contacts are a -5.5 which is really bad.
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Benjamin
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Post by Benjamin »

When you have 20/20 vision, either with or without correction such as eye glasses or contacts, and you look at a tree 300 feet away with leaves all over it, the leaves have a crisp outline. With laser vision correction, you may have 20/20 vision, but you lose this crisp vision. I'm not entirely sure why or how that works, but for this reason I have decided not to have laser vision correction.
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Post by matthijs »

Recently I heard/read that here in the Netherlands of all the eye surgeons only a handful have had laser vision correction themselves. Makes you wonder ... :wink:

Ok, that fact could have more reasons. And of course an eye surgeon cannot take any risk at all having surgery on his eyes. On the other side, anybody else depending on his eyes for his work cannot take much risk.

Anyway, I would do some thorough research before you take a decision.
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RobertGonzalez
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Post by RobertGonzalez »

My eyes are -3.75 and -4.00. I know a guy that had surgery on his -5.00 eyes and was restored to 20/20. He did have astigmatism, however, and that was not corrected in the surgery.

In all, I know about 8 people that have had the procedure and all have said they would recommend it. But I have never had the opportunity to ascertain why, other than the fact that they can see the numbers on the alarm clock as soon as they wake up. I'd like that too, but I really want to know if my vision will be close to perfect after the surgery.
thiscatis
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Post by thiscatis »

you all need to get away from your computer screens more often. :twisted:
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seodevhead
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Post by seodevhead »

I have a close friend that had pretty poor eyesight and she went through with the laser eye surgery. She was very scared of the procedure and decided that if she was going to do it, she was going to go to the best, most respected lasik eye surgeon in the area. She researched it all heavily, found out who was the most experienced doctor with the latest technology and spent big bucks to have it done with him.

To make a long story short, she was in pain for about 3-4 days after the surgery and when the pain went away, her vision was no better than before. She noticed perhaps a slight improvement, but she still needed her glasses. The doctor offered to do a second surgery free of charge. To this day she has denied the second surgery offer and I believe the doctor refunded the money for the surgery. It was a big ordeal.

Now she is basically back where she was before she had any surgery, still wearing the same glasses with poor vision. People ask her all the time about whether they should get the surgery done... she always explains to them that stuff can go wrong. Luckily, her eyesight didn't get worse, it just stayed the same. (I think about 20/400 vision). She does not recommend it... especially considering she went to the "top-notch" doc (in the country) that to this day is revered as the most respected in the field. Since then she has met many people that have had similar experiences and she always remarks at how odd it is you never hear about the "failed" surgeries, you only hear all the easy success/walk right out with 20/20 stories.

My eyesight isn't that bad, but if it was and I was considering my options, based on what I have seen with this one friend, eye surgery would not be one of them... at least not right now.
casual1978
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Post by casual1978 »

a friend of mine had this treatment and they now swear their vision is perfect.
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s.dot
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Post by s.dot »

Here's a lot of information about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LASIK

I'm sure you probably looked there already, though.

Half the time I don't read such information. Sounds dumb, but if I listened to the possible side effects of my medication, I'd never take them. Needless to say I take them every day and I am fine.
matthijs
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Post by matthijs »

And make sure that for your final decision you focus on objective information sources like second opinions of (independent) doctors and solid scientific research (see also medline). Not what you find on the internet. A day of surfing probably will bring you tons of forum posts of people's bad experiences, while you hear nothing from people who have had success.

Each operation has its risks. By now there should be some/enough hard data on those risks. Does 2% of the treatment result in problems? 5%? 0.02%? What complications are these exactly?
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Luke
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Post by Luke »

This is enough to make me not want to have the procedure
wikipedia wrote:Although there have been a number of improvements in LASIK technology[21][22][23] , a large body of conclusive evidence on the chances of long-term complications is not yet in place. Also, there is a small chance of complications, such as slipped flap, corneal infection, haziness, halo, or glare. The procedure is irreversible.
Until there is enough evidence there are no long-term effects, I'm going to be worried about that. Vision is just too important to lose.
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RobertGonzalez
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Post by RobertGonzalez »

Dude, why are a bunch of my posts getting flagged as 'Stop watching this thread for replies'? I had no idea there were new comments in this thread until I got back into it. Then I noticed that I have the option now of 'Watch this thread for replies' wjhen I was already watching this thread. What happened?
/end_biznitching

Any way, I am looking around for a lot of information. I know there are horror stories. I have read a good deal of them, from people not seeing any imrpovement to people getting blinded permanently by doctor's who neglected simple steps in ensuring a good outcome. Overall, the number of horror stories is significantly smaller than the success stories, so I am think I can comfortably subside any fear I would have (besides, all surgeries involve risk, so I am at peace with anything going horribly awry).

Anyway, I will continue to research this. Thanks for the input up to this point.
alex.barylski
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Re: Has anyone every had laser vision correction?

Post by alex.barylski »

Everah wrote:My wife has decided that this fathers day an excellent gift from the kids to me would be laser vision correction so I don't have to wear glasses anymore. While I have had a few friends that have had the procedure I really have no one at the moment that I can bounce this off of. Except, that is, this community.

Have any of you ever had this procedure done? If so, what was your experience? Would you recommend it to anyone? More importantly, would you recommend it to me?

Any and all feedback is welcomed and appreciated.
My cousin had it done a few years back because he needed it for a position in the police force or something. It worked for him, he now has 20/20 vision and says he only wishes he could have done it sooner.
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Weirdan
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Post by Weirdan »

As you might have known, this year I had gone through laser microsurgery because of sore eye. It wasn't vision correction , though I think it had something in common with that. So far I have no complaints. Over here doctors measure vision in percents, and they said my vision was recovered from 5% to 98% (it's used to be 100% before the decease).
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John Cartwright
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Post by John Cartwright »

Came across this, and thought it would answer all your questions in one swoop.

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