Matthew Pruitt is the owner of NuVision Medicenters, which has offices throughout the tri-state area. He has been working with LASIK technology since 1995 and has assisted in over 25,000 LASIK eye procedures over the course of his career.
LASIK doesn’t ever just not work. That is because what makes your vision blurry has to do with the shape of your cornea, and the shape of your cornea will inevitably change when the laser is re-sculpting it during the procedure. However, there are times when the first outcome from a LASIK treatment is not the optimal outcome, so vision can be a little bit less than perfect for a short time for some patients.
When that occurs, and the vision is anything less than absolutely perfect after a LASIK procedure, the doctor will wait for the vision to stabilize—usually for a period of about three months—and then go back in and touch it up until he or she has gotten the LASIK patient to the point where they want to be. The chance of something like that happening, however—and this going back to having a good, skilled surgeon—is usually less than 3%. That means that for 97% of patients, the outcome is flawless, which is why the success rate with LASIK is so high and so many former patients are still raving about their results today.
I should also add that the successful outcome of a LASIK procedure really depends on the prescription that you have going into the treatment. People will more severe prescriptions may be more likely to need a touch-up from their doctor because there is a longer distance to go to get to perfect vision. So they may be a bit more likely to be in that 3% probability of needing a touch up than someone with a more modest prescription.
Other people who may decide they need a touch up are those who have a combination of nearsightedness plus astigmatism. The laser can simultaneously treat both, but again when you are treating two complications that will obviously make the treatment a bit more complicated, so that enhancement rate or touch up rate could get a little closer to that 3%.
However, even if a patient’s vision is not perfect, he will still be able to drive and do anything else he needs to do during the months while he’s waiting for his vision to stabilize after their initial LASIK treatment. Rather than going blind—which is an unfounded fear some patients still have—their vision will simply not be defined to the level they are looking for during those three or so months until the follow up procedure. So to put it in comparison, it is like they are temporarily seeing standard television instead of a high definition television for the few months until they get their vision touched up.
