Is vision correction right for me?

(Adopted from Dr. Soroudi’s Book: Advanced Refractive Surgery)

As an ophthalmologist specializing in refractive surgery, I am always amazed to see how little people know when it comes to their options regarding laser vision correction. It is equally as remarkable for me to see how so many people have just been truly mislead about refractive surgery and have very unnecessary fears and disproportionately unrealistic concerns and expectations.

The source of the misinformation is usually Optometrists who actively discourage their patients for obvious business reasons, other doctors who have no clue what refractive surgery is all about, people who “have a friend who has a friend who had LASIK and went blind,” and last but not least, from other, usually older, Ophthalmologists who have very little training in the field refractive surgery.

This is a sub-specialty to which eye surgeons in residency, and even some post-doctoral fellows in corneal surgery, have minimal amount of exposure, and as such, their opinions about refractive surgery may not be based on experience and/or first-hand knowledge.

This combination of lack of information and mis-information is the most common cause of why so many people delay their decision to try to do something to be independent of their glasses, reading glasses, or contact lenses until they “just can’t take it any more!” or until they get a corneal infection (ulcer) from wearing their contacts so much that they no longer have a choice but to have surgery.

You see, glasses are just not an option for the millions of people who almost always “abuse” their contact lenses. They are truly “legally blind” without their contacts yet they don’t even have a pair of glasses to their name: so they wear their contacts until they literally have to “yank” them out of their eyes just to replace them with a new one immediately after. Some use their contacts till the last day, and call their optometrist to give them an “emergency” pair of contacts until they can get a new box (I myself used to be in this category when I was in medical school).

Some exercise and swim in their contacts, go to the Jacuzzi, steam room, and they sleep in their contacts for months at a time. They call their “eye doctors” (often Optometrists) every year and get a renewal prescription (often) over the phone without a proper eye examination and life goes on until one of the two above scenarios take place: they either get an ulcer, or they “just can’t take it anymore” as they’ve permanently damaged their corneas or developed an “allergic reaction” or outright keratoconjunctivitis. If you are one of such people, sooner or later you WILL get a corneal ulcer and you just might PERMANENTLY damage your eyes.

I get so frustrated to hear these same people telling me, on a daily basis, how they “have been told” they can get an eye infection or go blind if they have LASIK surgery yet they have been abusing their eyes by contact lenses for decades. I used to be amazed to hear how many of these same people are brain surgeons, plastic surgeons, vascular surgeons, dentists, radiologists, photographers, videographers, movie editors, and artists who all have two important things in common: 1) they depend on their perfect vision to survive, and 2) they’re all my own close friends and colleagues! There is so much that can be done to not only help these types of people see perfectly without any need for glasses or contact lenses, but to also prevent them from needing a corneal transplant…

The reason I decided to write my book is to help relieve some of the unnecessary fears that are just rampant among people wearing thick glasses, reading glasses, and strong contact lenses and to provide those who have been considering refractive surgery all the pros and cons about their options so that they can make a wise, “educated” decision.

I am always the first person to say I would have to see something in order to believe it, but as someone who has himself undergone LASIK surgery, I will not hesitate to tell you to believe it first, and you will literally “see” how refractive surgery can change your life so drastically.