Any cure for LASIK damage?!
Question:
Any cure for LASIK damage?
If someone gets LASIK eye surgery and they're are unfortunately part of that 1% that gets side effects such as blurred vision or blindness.. is there any way to cure that at all? Or is LASIK a serious risk people are taking that could just cause our eyes to be worse than before the operation?
Answers:
My corneal specialist has seen a couple of the unfortunate 1% LASIK failures since I've been with the practice. He has performed corneal transplants on patients who have had severe flap damage. He did see one last week who had been referred to him because of epithelial ingrowth; he is treating that and that patient has a good prognosis for a full recovery.
Most of the postop complications that are referred are due to infections. Of those people with infections, in our practice about 30% of them were NOT compliant with their postop drop regimen of Pred Forte and antibiotics, got water in their eyes before the recommended 1-2 weeks postop and ended up with acanthomoeba infections.
My data collection has shown that in the past 10 years, my corneal specialist has seen 6 people total for problems like corneal ectasia, laser induced astigmatism, one case of undiagnosed glaucoma, and one case where the patient had an undiagnosed connective tissue disease...the last two are definite contraindications, and the corneal ectasia was due to the original surgeon not leaving enough cornea.
I pull together research and data for my ophthalmologists and in looking things up, flap problems do not make up that much of postop complications...about 7% of the patients referred to my corneal specialist. Keep in mind...this is just ONE practice in one area...and we are mostly a referral clinic.
There are always going to be risks with ANY surgery, whether it be LASIK/PRK, appendectomy, tonsils out, ear tubes in. It all has to do with the experience of the surgeon, how well maintained their equipment is, and following postop instructions to minimize those risks.
The link below has a lot of information, including contraindications (who should NOT have LASIK/PRK), complications, treatments of complications, and prognosis outcomes.