Exposing the LASIK Scam

First off, I am so surprised to see how many people have had bad outcomes with there LASIK/LASEK surgery. For a moment, after hearing about all of the people that had good results, I thought that I was the only one who a received bad. I see now that this is not nearly the case. I am a family physician who has been wearing glasses since my 3rd grade year in school and just recently I got fed up with my glasses at the age of 28. My prescription had gotten so strong that it would cause me to have headaches and at the end of each day, it felt like my eyes were screenburned. I finally got a consultation to see a LASEK doctor to which I had been referred to by an optometrist to which I felt comfortable with. After a long discussion, thought and prayer I decided to go ahead and have the surgery done but with only one eye done at a time. My original prescription in my glasses was about -6.25 in the R eye and -6.175 in the L eye. My doctor told me that this was about the average set of eyes that he operated on. So, I had the R one done first, which was my worst eye. He did tell me that it would take about 3-4 weeks before the eye was completely healed and that is when I would have my best vision. After the surgery, everything was blurry and then about 2-3 days later, I started to get my vision back. I must say that the way that my R eye turned out after 4 weeks was excellent!!!!!! So, I waited another month before I decided to get the other eye done, thinking that since the first one was done so well, why not get the other one done as well, but still a little cautious of my L eye getting screwed up. Well, I had the L one done as well and the night of the surgery day after going to sleep, I noticed that my eye was in excrutiating pain as if something were in it. He does put a protective soft lens over your eye post-op but it did not hurt like this on the R eye. I started to panic and quickly called my doctor. He said if the contact is still in, don't worry. So after about two weeks and removal of the contact the next Thursday after the surgery, I started to get some vision back. Although a slower recovery of vision than the R eye. I noticed that the letters that I was seeing were MICRO compared to the R eye. Then I knew that I had been overcorrected in the L eye, my best eye. Now, I was FARSIGHTED in the L eye. After seeing my doctor the following week, he stated that I could see 20/15 in the L eye and that I had been OVERCORRECTED about +0.5. My heart sunk and I thought that I was going to DIE. He told me that I should continue to use NPD which is an Antibiotic/Steroid solution that he uses 2 times/daily and FLAREX in the R eye 2 times/daily and that he thought that my slight OVERCORRECTION would even out. I have doubts about this ever evening out. Although it has been only 3 days since I saw him last, I still don't see this getting better. Has any one on this forum had a similar experience and had a good out come with correcting OVERCORRECTION with eye drops. I am not having surgery again and have vowed to tell everyone considering LASEK/LASIK that if they are comfortable with their glasses/contacts, then keep them. LASIK/LASEK really should be banned because it is an ELECTIVE procedure that can possibly ruin your quality of life. My eyes are open even wider now to patients needs and considerations of what it is that is bothering them. A lot of things that are going on with people a completely avoidable if only given the right information before making a decision. LASEK/LASIK is one the headaches that I really wish I did not do. It has slown me down considerably as a physician and as a 28 y/o young man who was able to do alot of things before LASIK. But I still thank God though, even in my stupidity, my eyes could have turned out worse. May GOD bless you all and you all are in my prayers.

I don't mean to burst your bubble, but you might want to research what kind of hell you have entered. There are many common long term ailments associated with LASIK, LASEK, PRK, etc... Many people were "OK" a short while after the procedure. Later on problems with tear film, prescription fluctuation, corneal erosions, vitreous floaters, etc, came into play. Read every word on this site backwards and forwards and inform yourself, as your LASEK "doctor" will not do such a thing. By the way, I am also in the medical field, and they screwed me just the same as everyone else. You will really be amazed, and disgusted, at what is taking place in the Opthalmic world. Consider yourself NEO... and you are about to take the blue pill.

LasikBS, that comment hit the nail on the head!

I am a qualified doctor as well and I find your complaints quite perflexing. I don't really consider it a bad outcome considering that it is within 10% of your original refractive error. What you are complaining hardly compares to what the others have experienced or are experiencing.

I had +0.5 overcorrection in the L eye as well but this was never a problem as I hardly noticed. My nightmare started when I had an enhancement done to correct 1.25 of astigmatism in that eye and that introduced a tonful of visual aberrations for me.

I have to say that you are exactly right. I was totally oblivious to the multitude of people with much worse results than the one that I received. I only have hope to hold on to that my eyes don't get much worse than they are now. I know that one thing is for sure though, I definitely am not getting any enhancements or doing anything else to them. I have made a lot of mistakes in life but I can see that if someone were to get a really bad result from this BS, they can go into severe depression, have a terrible quality of life and can contemplate committing suicide. I have to inform my patients about this if they ask or consider getting this done. My only response to anyone is to KEEP YOUR GLASSES. Thank you for sharing your stories..

Some patients are plano and both eyes and suicidal over their corneal refractive surgery outcome. Why? Intolerable persistent burning and/or pain that drives them mad.

If you are accustomed to having glasses correct you to 20/15 and have low naturally occurring aberrations it's unlikely that corneal refractive surgery will get you back the vision you were accustomed to. Trying to adjust to an over/undercorrection... things not being just right... having difficulty focusing... these are not trivial matters!

When you throw in persistent gritty dry eye you can be talking about a completely miserable human being who is well within 10% of their original refractive error. (Plus some HOA's thrown in that the industry won't accurately measure because they refuse to go out to your full scotopic pupil diameter).

I just read this article today...

Dry Eye and Corneal Sensitivity After High Myopic LASIK

Journal of Refractive Surgery Vol. 23 No. 4 April 2007

Ilpo S. Tuisku, MD; Nina Lindbohm, MD, PhD; Steven E. Wilson, MD, PhD; Timo M. Tervo, MD, PhD

I just love this analogy. Can I be Trinity?

LOL.... Sure, Glenn Hagele can be Agent Smith.

I think the Matrix is going to uninstall that corrupt program.

What are they going to do about it? Keep them high on an opiate derivative like Vicoden for the rest of their natural lives? These LASIK surgeons are passing the buck for treatment of a debilitating chronic condition of their own creation - created during an elective surgery that is oversold to the underinformed. LASIK surgeons are very, very, very, sick people. How could you pen something like the article above and go to work the next day to slice and vaporize more virgin corneas?

The only thing worse I can imagine is NOT writing something like that and going to work to slice and vaporize more virgin corneas. Awareness is the first step on the road to change.

Scientist writes:

Hey, Don't knock Vicodan for post refractive complications. It produces profound miosis (pinpoint pupils) which markedly mitigates post refractive GASH! And unlike alphagan, tachyphylaxis to its miotic effects do not occur.

Seriously though, all patients should be warned that chronic, debilitating pain is a potential risk factor of LASIK. But this will not happen until mainstream refractive surgeons acknowledge the existence of these problems. As long as they continue to collude together, all the boats in their shared harbor will indeed continue to rise.

The imbalance that my corrective surgery has caused has caused me to be very very tired in the fact that I am not able to relax my eyes and really not able to breath relaxingly until I am asleep. When I wake up in the morning, my brain instantly notices the imbalance and makes my heart beat as if I were going to have a heart attack. This usually will become somewhat tolerable after an hour. I would really give anything to turn back the hands of time. I will have to talk to my doctor to see if there is anything that can be done to make this more tolerable for me.

Sounds like anxiety to me, but I'm not a doctor (but the rest of you guys on this thread are!) I remember being in a constant state of anxiety in the early post-op period while I was trying to figure out what was wrong with my eyes. I could barely focus at work, no pun intended. I cried myself to sleep every night, then woke up crying. I remember having panic attacks on the freeway at night -- that was before I gave up driving at night. The first year or two was hell. Just remember how blessed you are that you are only dealing with a minor overcorrection and not something that is completely debilitating. If glasses or contacts can address your problem, you are very, very blessed. If I were you, I'd get some glasses just to see if it helps you cope and adjust to your new vision.

I'll tell you a short story about one of the issues I was dealing with (there were many!). The quack who did my LASIK induced a full diopter of astigmatism in my right eye. I didn't have astigmatism before LASIK. Because of the astigmatism, everything was blurry in all lighting conditions (I won't even bring up my night vision because that was complete garbage from day one in both eyes after LASIK). I couldn't understand why my right eye was so blurry, and the quack who did this to me kept it hidden from me that he had induced a full diopter of astigmatism. So I panicked for 2 months until they told me the truth and wrote me a script for glasses. I remember when I put the glasses on and the distortion was gone how relieved I was. (Not long after that I began to regress, and regress, and regress...) Of course, as I said, that was just one of several issues I was dealing with. The most debilitating for me was my night vision which has never gotten better and never will because I have 8mm pupils and a 6mm no-blend VISX-piece-of-crap laser treatment. My effective optical zone is about 5mm at most. About half the "area" of my cornea that I see through at night is uncorrected and horribly distorted. My vision is like a visual hell at night. I describe it like a thick black fog of distorted lights, halos, and starbursts, and multiple images. I have no contrast sensitivity. I cannot see pedestrians on the side of the road. I see up to 8 moons at night -- a huge ugly distorted mass of moons overlapping each other and smeared all over. I cannot tell how many headlights are coming at me. If I try to drive at night my chest tightens up in fear like I'm going to have a heart attack. This is what a LASIK quack did to me. It's permanent, and it's an absolute disability. I cannot even find my way through a parking garage. I cannot go out to dinner at night without someone holding my hand to guide me and watching my steps for me. I own a hundred flashlights and they are strategically located throughout my house, in my car, in my gym bag, everywhere I go. For about 5 years I would not go to a movie theatre because I couldn't deal with the difficulting finding my way to a seat, then seeing the pulsating halos and starbursts as my pupils responded to the light from the movie screen. I have a huge spotlight sitting on the shelf above my washing machine because I cannot see down in the washing machine and I cannot see to pour the liquid into the Woolite cap. I had an electrician rewire the lighting in my house so you can now land aircraft with my house lights. I can no longer... oops, I said this was a short story about one issue, and I wasn't going to bring up my night vision. Sorry.

Like Broken Eyes I have an undersized ablation, but I have a 'blend zone'. A blend zone is a pathetic joke if it's inside the area of your pupil.

However my case and Broken Eye's case illustrate that it is better to have a blend zone than not.

I see huge starbursts, too - but I can still drive. I take a low dose lorazapem before I drive home in the winter, even though it's only a couple of miles in a well lit area... because my unnatural, distorted vision still causes me tremendous anxiety.

I had more generalized anxiety symptoms also after LASIK - waking up anxious, difficulty sleeping and concentrating... until my doctor prescribed me Ativan (Lorazepam). I take this as needed. I find I need it less and less.

My day vision is also a problem because I have set-in flap wrinkles that Dr. Terry Kim failed to address in a timely fashion, and dry eye affect my vision. My vision is different at different times of the day and my glasses are never 'right'.

A technician at an Opthalmology office told me yesterday that he thought I was just 'sensitive'. Sensitive? Last time I checked you were supposed to be able to find things in your car in something less than bright sunlight and normal night vision shouldn't resemble an explosion in a fireworks factory.

If he had my vision he'd need some antianxiety medication, too.

Apparently VISX offers 'training opportunities' and 'certifications' to technicians. It works - this guy is really brainwashed. This technician did admit that surface treatments have better outcomes than LASIK and that they were moving away from LASIK.