Cautions On The Use Of Lasik- Limits To A Miracle

Lasik is great science and a literal lifesaver for many people, but it has limitations just like many other scientific and medical procedures. The biggest one is age. Patients tend to be much more satisfied with Lasik at younger ages. Once patients reach the age of 45 the benefits become more limited. Lasik can help people become less farsighted or less nearsighted. It cannot deal with the typical problem of people over 45 in that they have problems with both near vision (reading, close work) and far vision (driving, distance vision).

One possible model for overcoming this problem is called Monovision. Monovision is the idea of correcting one eye to make it better for far vision and one eye to make it better for near vision. This is best first tried out with contact lenses. This is a comfortable solution for many people, but other people have difficulty adapting the brain to deal with markedly different information coming from each eyes. This can lead to headaches and double vision. In addition, there is a loss of much of depth vision since the eyes no longer work very much in stereo.

The basic problem is that over the age of 40, the muscles in the eye become weaker, the lens more brittle. These are problems that are not affected by reshaping the cornea, which is what laser ablation does. Certain other conditions are not responsive to lasik, particularly amblyopia. Amblyopia, also known as lazy eye is a condition that affects 4% of the population. Doctors are unable to repair the way the brain response to retinal data. Many people with this condition have no benefit by keeping the lazy eye more in focus, with Lasik.

About 98% of patients in national trials have at least 20/25 vision after lasik surgery. However there are other problems. About 25% of patients initially have problems with their night vision, including seeing unexplained glare and halos in their vision. This declines to 4.7% after 12 months. No one is sure why this happens, its as if the eye and the brain get to train themselves more to respond and use better the new conditions created by the surgery. Some studies also found a diminishing of sensitivity to contrasts, which is more complicated than reading numbers of an eye chart. Other risk factors include if you are a person involved in contact sports where you could expect to be hit near the eye. This could possibly disturb your recovery from surgery.