Who is lasik for

Also, certain medications, such as corticosteroids, acne medications, and pregnancy can affect the healing process. LASIK improves your vision by reshaping your cornea — the surface of the eye that helps focus light to create an image on the retina. If your cornea is too thin or misshapen, or if you have eye diseases like significant glaucoma or corneal scarring you are likely not a candidate for LASIK.

During your initial consultation, your ophthalmologist will measure the thickness of the cornea to make sure there is enough tissue for the reshaping required to achieve the desired amount of correction. Understanding the limitations of laser vision correction is important to a satisfactory outcome. Patients with unrealistic or uninformed expectations for the procedure, recovery, and results may not achieve their goals with an elective laser vision correction procedure like LASIK.

Before LASIK eye surgery, we will help you understand what results you can reasonably expect after the procedure, given your particular prescription and individual circumstances. Determination for LASIK candidacy is made on an individual basis, taking your medical history, prescription and other health factors into consideration. For some people, though, they may take longer to disappear or they may remain.

These problems often can be improved with glasses, contact lenses, or additional laser surgery. If you are happy wearing contacts or glasses, you may not want to have refractive surgery. Before choosing to have LASIK, it's important to do your homework to ensure you are a good candidate, understand the potential risks and benefits, and have realistic expectations about what your vision will be like after surgery and for years to come. To ensure the best possible outcome, be a well-prepared and informed patient by reviewing the resources below before you have LASIK.

If these materials raise any questions for you, be sure to discuss these questions with your ophthalmologist. Your ophthalmologist may need this information if you have other eye surgery later, such as cataract surgery. Bring this "K Card" with you to your appointment with your ophthalmologist to have it completed and keep it for future use. Questions to Ask When Considering LASIK If you are considering LASIK, you should discuss with your ophthalmologist the benefits and risks — including quality of life issues — that could result from correcting vision with surgery rather than eyeglasses or contact lenses.

About Foundation Museum of the Eye. By Kierstan Boyd. Here are some of them: You should be 18 years or older ideally, over 21 years old, when vision is more likely to have stopped changing. Your eye prescription should not have changed much in the last year. Your corneas need to be thick enough and healthy, and your overall eye health must be generally good.

They include people with: an unstable changing refractive error extreme levels of myopia, hyperopia or astigmatism severe dry eye corneas that are too thin cornea abrasions or disease keratoconus cone-shaped cornea advanced glaucoma a cataract affecting vision a history of having certain eye infections diabetes that is not controlled well pregnant or nursing women Your ophthalmologist can talk with you about other conditions that may keep you from having LASIK.

Here is what will be done: The overall health of your eyes will be checked. Measurements of your cornea will be taken. Your pupil size will be checked. Your refractive error will be measured. What to expect with LASIK Before the laser eye surgery You and your ophthalmologist will discuss your vision needs based on your lifestyle. Here is what he or she will do: Test your vision. But it's not right for everybody. Learn whether you're a good candidate and what to consider as you weigh your decision.

If you're tired of wearing eyeglasses or contact lenses, you may wonder whether LASIK surgery is right for you. LASIK is a type of refractive eye surgery. But most people still eventually need glasses for driving at night or reading as they get older. LASIK surgery has a good track record. Complications that result in a loss of vision are rare, and most people are satisfied with the results.

Certain side effects, particularly dry eyes and temporary visual disturbances such as glare , are fairly common. But these usually clear up after a few weeks or months, and very few people consider them to be a long-term problem.

Your results depend on your refractive error and other factors. People with mild nearsightedness tend to have the most success with refractive surgery. People with a high degree of nearsightedness or farsightedness along with astigmatism have less-predictable results. Read on to learn more about what to consider as you decide whether this surgery is right for you. There are several variations of laser refractive surgery.

LASIK is the best known and most commonly performed. Many articles, including this one, will use the term "LASIK" to refer to all types of laser eye surgery. Typically, images are focused on the retina in the back of the eye. With nearsightedness, farsightedness or astigmatism, they end up being focused either in front of or behind the retina, resulting in blurred vision. Traditionally, blurry vision is corrected by bending refracting light rays with glasses or contact lenses.

But reshaping the cornea the dome-shaped transparent tissue at the front of your eye itself also can provide the necessary refraction and vision correction. Before a LASIK procedure, your eye surgeon will assess detailed measurements of your eye and assess the overall health of the eye.

You may be instructed to take a mild sedative medication just prior to the procedure. After you are lying comfortably on an operating table, eye-numbing drops will be administered. Then he or she will use a special type of cutting laser to precisely alter the curvature of your cornea. With each pulse of the laser beam, a tiny amount of corneal tissue is removed, allowing your eye surgeon to flatten the curve of your cornea or make it steeper. Most commonly, the surgeon creates a flap in the cornea and then raises it up before reshaping the cornea.

There are also variations in which a very thin flap is raised or no flap is used at all or no flap at all, is raised. Each technique has advantages and disadvantages. Individual eye surgeons may specialize in specific types of laser eye procedures. The differences among them are generally minor, and none are clearly better than any others. Depending on your individual circumstances and preferences, you may consider:.

Photorefractive keratectomy PRK.