How Well Can You Expect To See After LASIK?
In response to consumer concerns about the safety and effectiveness of LASIK surgery, the FDA, the National Eye Institute (NEI), and the Department of Defense (DoD) launched the LASIK Quality of Life Collaboration Project (LQOLCP) in October 2009.
Goals of the project included:
- To help better understand the risks of LASIK surgery
- To identify visual symptoms that can result from LASIK
- To determine the percent of patients who experience difficulties performing their usual activities following LASIK
- To determine overall patient satisfaction with LASIK surgery
Two studies called the Patient-Reported Outcomes With LASIK (PROWL) studies were developed and conducted as part of the project. Both studies assessed patients' visual symptoms before and after their LASIK surgery to identify changes over time. The studies also measured the effect LASIK had on patients' abilities to perform normal daily activities without corrective lenses after the surgery.
The PROWL-1 study was conducted at the U.S. Naval Medical Center San Diego refractive surgery clinic and included 262 active duty participants. The PROWL-2 study included 312 civilian participants across the country. Both studies were completed in 2014 and data was collected from patient questionnaires to evaluate outcomes.
Key findings from the Patient-Reported Outcomes With LASIK studies were:
- Up to 46 percent of participants who had no visual symptoms before LASIK surgery reported at least one visual symptom three months after the procedure.
- Halos around lights was the most commonly reported visual symptom after LASIK surgery. Up to 40 percent of participants who reported no halos before LASIK had halos three months following surgery.
- Dry eyes also was a common occurrence after LASIK. Up to 28 percent of participants with no symptoms of dry eyes before LASIK reported dry eye symptoms at three months after their surgery.
- Other potential visual symptoms after LASIK include starbursts, ghosting and glare.
- Less than 1 percent of study participants experienced "a lot of difficulty" with or an inability to do usual activities without eyeglasses or contact lenses because of visual symptoms after LASIK surgery.
- More than 95 percent of the study participants were satisfied with their vision following LASIK surgery.
More information about the LASIK Quality of Life Collaboration Project and the PROWL studies can be found on the FDA website.
In other research of the safety and effectiveness of LASIK, investigators from the U.S. and Germany recently conducted a literature review of 97 peer-reviewed clinical studies of LASIK vision correction that were published between 2008 and 2015. A total of nearly 68,000 LASIK-treated eyes and 30 different laser systems were included in these studies.
Results of this analysis revealed:
- 20/20 or better vision was achieved in 90.8 percent of the 56,000 eyes that reported visual acuity data.
- 99.5 percent of patients could see 20/40 or better without corrective lenses after LASIK.
- Overall, 90.9 percent of patients were within 0.5 diopter (D) of the targeted vision correction, and 98 percent were within 1.0 D.
- Less than 1 percent of patients lost 2 lines of best-corrected visual acuity on a standard eye chart (among 58,653 procedures reporting these data).
Also, the studies that provided data on patient satisfaction found only 1.2 percent of patients were dissatisfied with their LASIK outcome.
"For those considering LASIK, the good news from all of this research is LASIK is and has been a very safe and effective vision correction procedure that has only gotten better over time," concluded Kerry Solomon, MD, one of the study authors and current president of the American Society for Cataract and Refractive Surgery.
Keep in mind that you might have minor
refractive errors remaining after LASIK surgery that may be too insignificant to undergo a
second laser treatment but that can cause some blurriness.
If this is the case, you might want to purchase a pair of glasses for use as needed for activities like driving at night. Also, depending on your age, you might need
progressive lenses to see your best at all distances or reading glasses to see small print.
If sensitivity to light is a problem after LASIK, glasses with
photochromic lenses often can provide relief. Whatever glasses you choose, lenses with
anti-reflective coating will give you the greatest comfort and clarity.
