Exposing the LASIK Scam

Doctors working with the company say the results are impressive. Stephen Slade, director of VisionTexas, a clinic in Houston, says about 92% of the eyes treated in a clinical trial ended up with 20/20 vision or better without glasses. That compares with about 86% with traditional Lasik. Only half of the patients saw an increase in so-called higher-order aberrations that can cause effects like halos. In traditional Lasik, by contrast, such aberrations almost always increase.

The technology is finding other uses. Dr. Slade says his clinic operates an outpost in Mexico that is now "fixing" patients who had Lasik but who are suffering from side effects.

LASIK is the King of Refractive Surgery. It is the most commonly performed operation in medicine, and the safest. No operation is 100% safe but LASIK comes close.

Anytime you have surgery there are some risks. Luckily the risks are low in LASIK and the rewards are high. Nevertheless, people have lost sight from having LASIK surgery. A good estimate is 1 in 10,000. We are proud that many doctors send their complications to us, from all over the world, to fix. The experience we gain from these complex cases translates to better results for our own patients.

Fiction: Complications and side effects, such as night glare and dry eyes, should be expected after having laser vision correction.

Fact: As with any other surgery, there are risks associated with laser vision correction. Clinical studies of laser vision correction have documented the risk of having a serious vision-reducing complication as being extremely low. Many complications can be treated if diagnosed and treated at the early stages.
Moderate glare and dry eyes are common side effects immediately following the procedure, but typically last just three to six months. Proper testing before the procedure can identify patients who are at a high risk for long-term risk for long-term complications.

Fiction: Laser vision correction is so new that no one really knows if there are any long-term side effects.

Fact: Although laser vision correction became widely available in the United States in the mid-1990s, the technology was first developed in the early 1980s. The first patient was treated in the United States in 1987. To date, no long-term ill effects of the procedure are known.

SBK is widely believed to mean thin-flap LASIK, but according to Dr. Slade, who coined the term, it actually refers to a more general idea of customizing the flap to the patient and the laser ablation.

?You customize the flap, just like you customize the ablation, according to the patient?s pupil size and according to the actual ablation pattern. In other words, you pick the size of the diameter and the thinness of the flap,? he said.