Electromechanical reshaping offers safer eye surgery
spectrum.ieee.org
spectrum.ieee.org
EDIT: Given some of the comments below, for reference: mine was done almost six years ago.
It’s essentially cataract surgery, so not for safety reasons.
FDA doesn’t recommend it past 45, I believe, because if you have age-related eye degeneration ICL won’t help where LASIK might and because it’s most studied in the 21 to 45 age group. Would be surprised if a surgeon said no due to age alone.
It’s cataract surgery. Apart from infection practically all the risks are lower than with LASIK. The principal downside is cost. (That said, I haven’t done it yet—I am on daily contacts.)
And be sure you do your annual check-ups. The place where I had mine done guaranteed any follow-up procedures would be free for life, but only if I could show I'd been doing the annual check-ups.
That's about all I can remember. After the procedure, you go home and take a nap. For me, I woke up the next morning and could see clearly.
After all of the advertising about how amazing and safe and wonderful it is, the rubber meets the road with the release you sign.
Essentially “we’re about to shoot LASERS into your eye and if we manage to not BLIND you, that’s a good outcome.”
All routine, of course, but it’s still a scary form to sign.
They were lucky enough to be happy at first (not everybody is). Long term, they all regretted it.
The statistics agree. I would personally not consider LASIK.
My mom sees halos around lights at night, so much so that she can't drive after sunset. Her eyes are so dry that she gets plugs inserted into her tear ducts to help retain moisture.
My friend who had it done also has severe dry eyes, to the point that he constantly uses eye drops.
In all four cases I know of, the good vision only lasted a few years. Eventually, glasses will be needed again to keep 20/20 vision.
One had severe "dry eye" feeling (described as "sand in my eyes") for a long time and needed to use drops.
The other had distorted vision and needed multiple follow-up "corrections."
I'm staying with contacts and glasses, personally.
Citation? It’s hard to find independent studies on LASIK since it’s big business, which is indeed a good cause for suspicion, but every follow-up survey I can find indicates net satisfaction in the 80-90+% range after 20 years, and the technology has massively improved so I’d expect the rate to go up even more over time.
If we’re doing anecdotes, my father got very early LASIK and is extremely happy he did, over 20 years later his vision is just starting to degrade again and he had only extremely minor halo issues (which are also less prevalent today due to the use of lasers instead of a knife to cut the eye open, leading to less scarring).
I’ve been considering laser eye surgery soon and it seems that all available technologies are decent. Based on my survey, SMILE>PRK>LASIK in terms of outcomes and risk, but SMILE works on a much more limited range of eye issues and PRK requires a somewhat lengthy and uncomfortable recovery period requiring time off work and caretaker support, so LASIK is still a good fallback option.
I know a few folks from college who got it done and a bit over decade later they're going strong. My own surgery is just about hitting a decade (couple of months shy). That said, I have a family friend who had bladed LASIK done in their 50s (late 2000s) and their outcome was bad with total loss of sight in the affected eye. The result on their other eye was barely an improvement but plenty of scarring lead to halos and starbursts.
Even if everything else went perfectly, I don't think that's an acceptable side effect for me.
I already have mild cataracts which make night vision annoying. Definitely don’t need it getting any worse!
The specifics are hard to estimate, since severity is fairly subjective, but it's pretty common for things like traffic lights at night to show them.
At the time it was about $1k per eye and of course vision insurance sucks and won’t make a difference for lasik. My company even had a lasik benefit ($1k/eye) but the offices that worked through insurance cost $2.5k/eye.
If I recall correctly there’s three major laser brands and they’re on the fifth generation lasers. The buzzword at that time was waveform technology.
Overall it has been AMAZING and everyone should do it. Literally can’t express how wonderful it is to no longer need contracts or glasses. It’s probably paid for itself already as well but the quality of life improvements are worth it even if there was no break even point.
If it matters, I have slight astigmatism in both my eyes.
It's surprisingly automated. The best thing you can do for yourself is call every provider and ask exactly what model machine they will use. As long as the doctor isn't grossly negligent, the one using the most recent and advanced machine will be your best option.
Before LASIK i was wearing some pretty heavy glasses, so i think the sight had already hit the worst part.
Maybe it’s because my eyesight wasn’t terrible to start with, but I didn’t notice any issues with night vision. I don’t know if I had issues with dry eyes, because like I said they were dry beforehand anyway.
There’s a ton of minor inconveniences that come with glasses that just disappeared, like wearing over ear headphones, putting your head on a cushion when lying down to watch tv, being in a humid/rainy place. I wish I had done it years before.
It’s worth it.
The Dr asked me to please be quiet because I was in awe describing the whole process out loud.
I believe we all here share this neurological condition.
Essentially, take a very very low risk of permanent eye problems to not have to wear contact lenses.
I'd rather pay for contact lenses forever, put them in, and take them out every day than risk anything to my vision.
Obviously contacts have risks as well but infinitesimal if used correctly.
Same same same. Soft contacts are pretty freaking great in the grand scheme of things -- go read contemporary accounts of what it was like to suffer from severe myopia even just 50 years ago. The hype surrounding LASIK when there is a cheaper, non-invasive, lower risk, minimally inconvenient and widely available alternative never made an ounce of sense to me.
For me the only significant downside is dry eyes (it damages the nerves that sense dryness so you don't produce as many tears), but that's manageable with eyedrops. I do notice my night vision getting slightly worse now in my late forties, but hard to tell if that actually had anything to do with Lasik or if it's just normal aging. No problems with driving at night yet, and eye exams tell me everything is normal.
A 3mm-long slit is made at the very edge of your iris, and the lens is inserted, then unfurled in place. Reversing it involves pulling the little sucker back out, easy-peasy. I've had that done, during cataract surgery.
It's not risk-free, but it's ostensibly MUCH safer than Lasik. We don't have enough data to make that a stronger certainty, though.
There's some interesting Infrared/LED light stuff coming out about eyesight repair too.
I found the risk/reward ratio of surgery* acceptable.
* Lasik is only used up to about diopter 6ish; I had ICL surgery.
I still can't look at flashing green LEDs the same way. Too many bad memories.
That said, this electroforming process sounds even worse than photocuagulation! I can't imagine it being a procedure they could do to a conscious person.
Also, I could only get my prescription filled in high-index lenses as the normal lenses would be too thick for nearly any glasses shop to order and grind. And had been that way for at least a decade by the time I opted for LASIK.
Poor control of my eye reflexes meant that even after over a year of trying I still couldn't reliably wear contacts, and was a highly stressful part of my day when I managed to get them on.
I had a family friend that went for LASIK very early on (late 2000s iirc) and had a horrible outcome losing sight in one eye, and a couple of friends in college that had amazing outcomes, so I had seen both sides. Ultimately, the LASIK operation was a very quick and pleasant operation for me, and the results were beyond my expectations. Nearly a decade later, my eyesight is still fine though I think I'm starting to see some blurring at middle distances that wasn't there a couple years ago. Did get some strong starbursts at night for a couple of years but I've either gotten used to them or they've faded.
After wearing glasses for around 20 years of my life, I love the freedom of no longer wearing them.
I'm still not gonna let somebody shoot my eyes with lasers. I'm just terrified that something will go wrong, and it won't be fixable. But that terror isn't justified by either anecdotal experience or the overall statistics.
Now it's nearly 20 years later, and I just turned 48.
My vision has deteriorated from "old age" enough now that I might have considered getting the procedure done again. Touch-ups are/were free at the Stanford clinic.
My vision has not deteriorated in the past 5 years or so, I am farsighted enough now that it is more comfortable to hold fine print things at arms length to read. And things far away are a bit blurry again.
But, I now think that getting eye surgery now to fix your vision is a bad move if glasses can correct it.
It's really just a strategy decision in the 'game of life'.
"Pretty soon", we are going to have wearable AR goggles that actually work.
When that threshold is crossed, "everyone" is going to have AR glasses, just like "everyone" has a smart phone right now.
Since you're going to be wearing glasses in a few years anyway, why risk the surgery?
The better question is do the major tech companies have enough power to force you to use smart glasses, like you can be forced to have a google or apple account to interact with certain banks? What can they break and make it so you need to use smart glasses to continue to use them?
With the matter protocol and smart IoT, maybe you'll need glasses to turn on lights, or some much clunkier interface with a phone. Maybe something more facebook like where you'll need them to communicate with your friends, leverage some network effects. I'm sure someone is figuring that out as we speak.
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There's a lot of legitimate use for a HUD too, but I doubt that is what will drive investment.
Once I realized the above was an option I lost all interest in eye correction.
The cynic in me says we won't be seeing adoption of this technology....
If a cheaper, faster, safer (therefore lower insurance cost) procedure becomes available, more clinics will open using it. Competition drives prices down fast in the domain of elective medical procedures.
Are not covered by Insurance.
Where have you been seeing medical costs come down the last 20 or so years that makes you think the relentless constant increasing prices is going to change? My medical costs are nearly double what they were 10 years ago and I have no medical issues, I doubt I'm an outlier.
There is no competition in a captured market with artificial supply limitations. ie the number of medical professionals that are legally allowed to sell or use the service.