News » When the Fine Print Applies to You
That’s the only way I can explain why I willingly let a doctor cut my corneas with a laser: vanity.
Little did I know when I chose Lasik surgery that I would not end up satisfied like the friends and acquaintances who raved about their post-glasses existence. Instead, my days are complicated, since I am dealing with side effects that are far more bothersome than being unfashionably four-eyed.
I had been wearing eyeglasses since I was 8, and I was tired of never seeing the stars without glare, of not being able to go rock-climbing unless I secured my glasses. Not to mention the horn-rimmed barrier between me and a date.
I had trouble figuring out which side of a contact lens to stick onto my eye, so I never really gave contacts a chance.
I had been considering Lasik — short for laser-assisted in situ keratomileusis, which entails cutting and reshaping the cornea — since the Food and Drug Administration approved it in the late ’90s. Because I was not too nearsighted and not too old, ophthalmologists told me I was an excellent candidate. But I wanted to wait until more people had gone under the laser.
Roughly 800,000 patients have had Lasik annually since 2000, spending about $2.5 billion on the procedure every year, said David Harmon, the president of Market Scope, a research company for the ophthalmic industry in Manchester, Mo.
The American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery reports a 95.4-percent patient satisfaction rate for Lasik, based on a recent analysis of research worldwide. The researchers found 19 studies specifically addressing patient satisfaction from the last decade, encompassing roughly 2,022 patients. (Some had been post-op for a month; others for a decade).