I never thought I will agree with this opinion, but you know… I agree partially now…

I can’t believe I missed this one. I’ll be checking some other sites on this….

I have to say, that I could not agree with you in 100%, but it’s just my opinion, which could be wrong….

Thanks for posting your comments.

You are absolutely correct in that a Rebuild Your Vision newsletter is going to be a bit biased against laser vision correction. Actually, I expect that they would be more that just “a bit” biased. For example, the article does not identify whether there were other factors (patient or doctor related) which were out of the ordinary for the cases highlighted.

.. And I think that’s where the usefulness of an organization like USAEyes is realized.

However, I believe that being aware of the possible outcomes, however small in regard to the percentage of patients that experience them is important.

For example, I have seriously considered having lasik done. But the mere thought that there can be a complication with my eyes (however small the probability) is extremely frightening to me because although I have poor eyesight, I value it tremendously. Added to this is that there is a situation where my friend’s wife did eye surgery a few years ago and is now blind.

Now I don’t know the specific details of her situation and I am sure that such things only happen to very few people, but it’s frightening nonetheless.

I took a read through your site – http://www.usaeyes.org/ – and it has very useful and interesting information. I found the following two pages particularly useful:

http://www.usaeyes.org/lasik/faq/lasik.htm

http://www.usaeyes.org/lasik/faq/lasik-tough-questions.htm

Lasik has been getting some attention in the news lately and I would like to suggest that readers go to your site for more information.

Also, can you give an indication as the number of patients that took part in your survey and how that number compares with the number of people that have actually done Lasik?

Again, thanks for your comments… greatly appreciated.

William

I work for a nonprofit Lasik patient advocacy. We don’t provide Lasik. We just provide Lasik information and we certify Lasik doctor’s patient outcomes.

I made four presentations to the FDA at the meeting you mention in this thread. One was the preliminary results of our USAEyes Competence Opinion Relative to Expectation (CORE) patient survey. According to the survey patients are strongly satisifed with their Lasik results.

99% report quality of life as expected, better, or much better
98% day vision as expected, better, or much better
98% no complications or issues are seldom problematic
98% would recommend surgery to family and friends.
97% would have surgery again, knowing what they know now
96% wear corrective lenses as often as expected, less, or much less than
expected
96% report postop vision without lenses as expected, better, or much better
than expected when compared to preop vision with lenses
96% report overall quality of vision as expected, better, or much better than
expected
91% no complications at any time
91% night vision as expected, better, or much better
7% complications seldom problematic
– 91% would have surgery again
2% complications frequent or always problematic
– 22% would have surgery again

Glenn Hagele
Council for Refractive Surgery Quality Assurance
USAEyes.org