I was surprised to read "older customers need a range of multifocal options". Did not know that multifocal contact lenses even existed!
Also, it really is a pity that only glasses and contact lenses are available for people with myopia, laser surgery having a high risk of various complications, most prominently eye dryness.
And yeah, multifocal lenses are a thing. Even my regular ones are weighted, and you can do the same there to achieve the same results as regular bifocal glasses. Although I know someone who just has different corrections for each eye, which sounds a bit weird to me.
There are a few actual complications, but they are rarer than complications from wearing contacts (depending to a certain extent on the clinic, of course).
I see adverts with claims like "98% of our patients see 20/20 or better after surgery". I feel like this is disingenuous and taking advantage of the fact that "20/20" is perceived as the gold standard for vision.
In fact many glasses and contacts wearers achieve 20/15 or 20/10 vision after correction, so the advert is telling me nothing about my chances of my best-corrected vision after surgery being as good as it is now. Plus there's a chance that LASIK might leave me with good vision but other side effects like dryness or haloes. AND there's the 2% chance they actually admit to that I'll have worse than 20/20 vision.
I don't know, maybe some people are so happy to throw away their glasses for ever that they'll put up with slightly worse vision and other side effects. I'm just not sure yet whether I'm one of them.
Snellen defined “standard vision” as the ability to recognize one of his optotypes when it subtended 5 minutes of arc.
Basically each line on the chart is marked with a distance such that it subtends 5 minutes of arc from that distance away. 20/20 simply means that you can see the 20 feet line from 20 feet away (20 feet being the standard testing distance). In no way does it represent "perfect" vision or the best possible resolution of the human eye.
Next time you go for an eye test you'll notice that the 20 line is usually the 3rd or 4th line up from the bottom. So if you can read lower than this your vision is "better than 20/20". This is often achievable with correction, even if your uncorrected vision is quite bad. (I believe there are limits to this with very high myopia, because of distortion caused by very thick lenses, etc).
This is why I find the way that LASIK is marketed to be disingenuous. I feel like people might be seduced by the offer of "20/20" vision, not realising that they already see better than that with their glasses on. The fact that LASIK companies are not 100% upfront about this just makes me a little suspicious about what else they might be hiding.
Disclaimer: I'm not an optometrist. Anyone who actually knows what they're talking about, feel free to correct me!
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snellen_chart#.226.2F6.22.28m....
They usually just use it while making incremental changes to the lenses and asking "which is better, 1 or 2". There would be no benefit to lying since I want my prescription to be accurate.
I guess it's different when the chart is actually used for a "test", like when someone is trying to become a pilot or whatever. There must be a little guesswork to get the best possible "score"! Then again I know there are other ways to measure the refraction of the eye, so I'm sure they don't rely on the chart alone.
My suggestion is if you are at all interested in the procedure, and I would HIGHLY recommend it, is to find a doctor that performs both styles of procedures, will educate you fully on the pros and cons of both, and will offer recommendations with quantitative reasoning. I went with the LASEK route for many reasons, however my cornea in one eye was too thin to support the correction needed for LASIK with the number of microns lost due to the scalpel incision.
The largest issues are that the outcomes of LASIK/LASEK are quasi-permanent and that there are many more variables involved than just an eye exam, including your own calmness during the procedure.
My doctor offered, as long as the eye can support the number of microns lost due to the correction, to perform a followup surgery if results ended up being poorer than 20/30 after the first surgery, free of charge. It took a few days before I could see the results (an issue with the method of procedure) however I resulted with 20/20 in one eye and 20/15 in the other.
As mentioned above, I feel like I ought to be evangelical about this as the quality of life increase is incredible.
Read my previous comments and if you want more info or an intro reach out >> anthony at 175g com
Indeed, it seems that the risk of significant vision loss consequence of LASIK surgery is ~5 times lower than that of contact-lens wearing, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LASIK#Risks . However, it also seems that this risk is tiny, on the order of 0.05%. Other complications of LASIK seem much more likely (see the same link). It would be interesting to see a large study comparing LASIK with wearing contact lenses.
I posted about that this week in another thread, I'll see if I can paste my response here..
With LASIK, they remove part of the eye, zap it, and then replace the 'flap' for it to re-attach. When it reattaches, it heals around the edges and this is what causes the HALOs in many people. It can also come loose if you are hit or jarred, like playing sports, boxing, mugged, car accident, pets, etc.
With LASEK, they dissolve the protective layer, called the epithelium, zap the eye, and then you keep your eyes closed for 24-48 hours while the epithelium regenerates -- they don't reattach it. With LASEK, there is nothing to come loose later and no edge tissue to cause halos.