It's been the most wonderful experience of my whole life.
In fact, after I had the procedure done, I told all my friends.
I don't have to worry about it at all.
I just wake up in the morning and I can see great.
It was so beautiful this spring to see all the flowers and to see them.
They seem so much closer and more vibrant.
I had the procedure done on a Monday and on a Tuesday morning at 8 o'clock I was seeing
patients.
Last year was the first year that I was able to go snow skiing without contacts.
I like getting up and seeing the clock first thing in the morning.
If I wake up in the middle of the night I can look up and see the moon and the stars.
I feel safer.
I feel prettier.
I feel more confident.
I went to Starbucks and I could read the menu up at the, you know, and I couldn't do that
before without my glasses or contacts.
I'm just really excited about being able to walk through life without having to worry
about contacts and glasses.
The life changing event these people are talking about is LASIK.
But if you're considering LASIK you should get the facts because there's more to this
miracle than meets the eye.
I tell patients you just don't mess with your eyes.
They're just too important and we take our vision for granted and we shouldn't.
It's a complicated procedure.
It looks very easy when you watch it but, you know, your surgeon has to know what he
or she is doing.
How does LASIK work?
In a perfect eye the cornea and lens work together to focus images on the retina.
If the eye is elongated light rays focus before they reach the back of the eye.
That's myopia or nearsightedness.
If the eye is shorter than normal you get hyperopia or farsightedness.
And if the cornea is irregular or uneven you get astigmatism.
It can cause blurry vision at any distance.
These are the most common eye disorders in the world and these are what LASIK treats.
One of the nice things about LASIK is that it does very little to the front surface of
the cornea.
It leaves that pretty much intact and as a result you get a very rapid recovery of vision
after LASIK surgery.
The LASIK process first involves making a very thin flap across the front part of the
cornea, folding that little flap back, then micron by micron removing tissue in areas
that need to be flattened or steepened to produce the desired result.
At the end of the procedure you have to put the flap back over the eye and that looks
deceptively simple.
You just flip it back, put some fluid around there and dry it up.
Except that you're dealing with very, very fine tolerances it's got to be put back exactly
in the same place where it came from.
It has to be settled down there so it's stable.
The patient begins blinking right after the surgery and you don't want anything to move.
The creation of that flap is not an easy thing to do.
It requires great skill and we have actually altered the keratome to make it safer.
There is a significant amount of art to LASIK, even more than the older method of PRK.
It needs to be done carefully and done right.
I think this is the part of LASIK that's not clearly understood by patients is that they
think it is purely a machine dependent procedure that has very little to do with the skills
and experience of the surgeon.
The skill of the surgeon is integral and patients simply do not understand or appreciate that
nearly to the level that they should.
The technology is so advanced that there's this sense that the laser itself does the
procedure.
It's the surgeon and the experience that they bring to it that guides the laser.
The laser they guide is an eczema laser or coal laser.
Rather than burning, it vaporizes the carbon bonds that hold the corneal tissue.
The result is a procedure that's virtually painless.
I was really surprised that it was such a simple and quick procedure.
All that I felt was the pressure when they were putting the blade over the eye, but other
than that you don't feel anything at all.
Of course I was a little bit nervous going into it and they put the numbing drops in
so that several times that I didn't feel anything and basically for me it was like a one day
healing process.
The only discomfort I experienced was maybe four hours afterwards I felt like I'd been
in the swimming pool a little too long.
You would think that you'd see people coming out after the surgery and it'd make you uneasy,
but I seen them coming out and they had big smiles on their face.
After it was over with I told them I said I was expecting a lot more than this.
This was just hardly nothing.
I was actually amazed that it went as quickly as it did and I was gone.
I remember distinctly having something to eat, taking a nap in the afternoon, and then
waking up and being amazed at the improvement over those two hours and how clearly I could
see.
The results of LASIK were so dramatic that by 1999 it had become the most popular surgery
in the world with over one million procedures in the U.S. alone.
The investment community quickly realized the financial potential of LASIK.
The marketing of LASIK began and publicly owned discount laser chains started to spring
up around the country.
They're doing it in the mall, you know, in certain parts of the country.
You know, you can go and watch somebody having it done while you're shopping.
If the patient gets the idea from the media that the surgery is just uniform, generic,
push a button and it's the same result for any surgeon, they're going to have the idea
that they can go any place and choose it just based on price or convenience.
Laser surgery is definitely not about price.
It's about the quality of the surgeon, it's about the quality of the clinic, and it's
about the quality of the results that you're going to achieve.
With LASIK right now it's a huge marketing blitz that's out there.
People get pulled in by the deal.
It's $9.99 for both eyes or they go to the Puyallup Fair and there's a deal at the fair
so this is where I'm going to have it done.
Their expectations are being lowered by the price that they're paying for the surgery.
All surgeons are not the same.
All surgical facilities are not the same.
Some facilities have doctors that are in resident training.
Some facilities have a surgeon as a director of clinics and staff is doing some of the
work.
The surgeon is on site.
You want to have your surgery done by the most competent, qualified surgeon available.
If you were going to have heart surgery, you know, you would pick the best and you wouldn't
quibble over a little bit of money.
You would want what you know was going to come out and be successful for you.
You don't have another chance.
Go get a good deal on your lawn equipment but spend the extra money to get a good eye
surgeon.
But where can you go for advice about selecting a good surgeon?
Dr. Lee Carr, Dean of the College of Optometry at Pacific University, suggests the family
eye doctor.
The optometrist can make an unbiased recommendation as to who the best surgeon is to perform the
procedure.
The optometrist truly has the patient's best interest at heart.
The people that see the most patients before and after surgery in an environment with the
equipment to examine and measure are the family optometrists.
They are going to know.
I mean, they are absolutely going to know who is good.
I had to decide whether I was going to place my confidence in an advertisement in the newspaper
or in my family doctor that's known me for years and has my welfare in mind.
He's an individual that knows you well.
He's very familiar with your eye condition.
I value the input from my family optometrist since I've been seeing him for six years.
My responsibility is really to tell them, are they a good candidate?
Who is the best surgeon to be able to satisfy your needs of getting a good result after
laser vision correction?
And finally, should you even do it?
Are you really the type of person that this would benefit?
In addition to providing the best referral for surgery, your optometrist serves a vital
need, follow-up care after the surgery.
In this respect, your surgeon and optometric physician work together as a team.
We work with those doctors who coordinate with us, who co-manage, who follow the patients
after surgery to make sure they know what we know.
Together we take on LASIK and the total outcome is highly dependent upon their care.
After care is overlooked, it's trivialized, but it's very important.
There are complications.
LASIK is a very safe procedure.
But when complications do arise, they need to be identified and dealt with very decisively.
Having someone who's competent and knowledgeable and experienced in looking at those kinds
of problems will ensure that the post-operative outcome is what you would want.
After surgery, I was seeing great 2016 within 24 hours, and I wanted my vision to continue
staying that way, so I have had many visits with my optometrist to ensure that I'm still
on the right track.
No matter where you go for your surgery, there are always risks involved.
These include abnormal flap healing, infection, or corneal perforation, which occur rarely.
More common is regression, where the effects of the surgery are lost over time.
The chances of this are greater the more correction you need.
Enhancement treatment can usually correct the problem.
And LASIK may not completely solve your vision problems.
You may still need to wear glasses or contact lenses.
You'll want to talk to your optometrist about these risks.
Together, you can decide whether you're a good candidate for LASIK.
Ideal LASIK candidate would be a patient who has problems wearing contact lenses and has
a prescription whereby the glasses cause them a lot of discomfort and a lot of distortion,
and they're ready for a change.
The media can be very misleading relative to who are good candidates, who are poor candidates.
LASIK's definitely not for everybody, and that's one of the things that is a real misconception,
is that people think that they will benefit from laser vision correction because everybody
else around them is talking about it.
LASIK is not perfect, and it's not guaranteed, and I think that's why you have to be very
aware of what you're getting yourself into and be very, very, very educated.
The procedure will be there in six months.
It will be there in five years from now.
It's when the patient is ready, when their set of expectations are there, and then the
procedure becomes really the procedure of choice and really life-altering for individuals.
So, if they have a problem that we can address and if they have realistic expectations, they're
a great candidate for LASIK.
Ultimately, the choice of surgeon is the determining factor in the success of LASIK.
So how will you decide?
I know that there are surgeries that are done quickly, and they're cheaper, but there's
also a lot of messes, and once you've messed up on your eye, there's very little they can
do to repair it, and you have to decide if a few hundred dollars is more important or
a good eyesight for the rest of your life.
I would definitely recommend using the surgeons that I've used at PCLI.
They are phenomenal, and being in the business, you get to know who's good, and you get to
see a lot of different outcomes, and you get to hear a lot of different patient testimonials.
I wanted for my eyes the best, absolutely the best.
So that's who I chose.
I would recommend PCLI 100%.
Anybody who's thinking about it, in fact, I tell people, if you're thinking about it,
just go to PCLI.
That's the place to go.
My patients are thrilled.
I'm happy, and when I examine their eyes, I know why they're so excited, and my expectations
and my goals have been met in trying to provide the very best for my patients.
I know I've done my job as a family eye doctor.
I would advise each patient to talk to your optometric physician.
Ask him if he had to get LACI, where would he go?
For more information about LASIK, speak with your optometric physician, or to reach a PCLI
office near you, call toll free, 800-224-7254.
In Alaska, call 800-557-7254.