When Additional Surgery Is Needed

A LASIK enhancement is a follow-up LASIK procedure that sometimes is performed if the outcome of your original vision correction surgery is unsatisfactory or if your vision changes significantly over time.

In most cases, you can expect a good result following a LASIK procedure. Due to continual improvements in LASIK technology and procedures, retreatments are seldom needed these days to enhance visual acuity.

But as your eye doctor will tell you before you have LASIK surgery, not everyone will achieve crystal-clear, 20/20 vision after just one procedure.

Each case has a unique combination of variables that can affect visual outcomes. So in some instances, you may need additional eye surgery — often in the form of a LASIK enhancement — to give you the sharpness of vision you desire.

Assessing visual satisfaction after LASIK

A number of factors can affect your satisfaction after LASIK:

Although LASIK successfully corrects high degrees of nearsightedness, farsightedness and astigmatism, younger people with mild nearsightedness and astigmatism generally are the best candidates for a good outcome.

Your expectations before LASIK also play a key role in how happy you are afterward. Remember, the goal of LASIK is to decrease your dependence on glasses and help you to see acceptably well without corrective lenses. Results vary from person to person.

Although many people who have had LASIK believe they see better than they did with eyeglasses or contact lenses before surgery, not everyone has the same experience.

After LASIK, you can expect your vision to be slightly better or about the same as it was with glasses.

A small percentage of people may notice their vision is not quite as good after LASIK as it was with glasses before the procedure. But you should be able to drive safely and perform other routine daily tasks without glasses or contact lenses after vision correction surgery.

When is a LASIK enhancement needed?

Don't panic if your vision isn't perfectly clear immediately after LASIK surgery.

When evaluating your vision after LASIK, it's important to be patient (no pun intended). Although you should be able to see much better without glasses the day after surgery, it's not unusual for vision to fluctuate for several weeks.

As part of your follow-up care after LASIK, your eye doctor will monitor your vision for several weeks to months.

Though not expected, it's possible that you may feel uncomfortable driving or performing other visual tasks after LASIK. If this occurs, be sure to tell your eye doctor. If necessary, he or she can prescribe new eyeglasses for you to wear part-time until your vision improves and stabilizes.

If your vision is still noticeably blurred three months after LASIK, you may need an enhancement.

To determine whether you're a good candidate for a LASIK enhancement, your eye doctor will re-evaluate your corneas with the same methods used prior to your first LASIK procedure.

Among other considerations, your eye doctor will check to see whether you have enough corneal thickness for a second surgery.

If there is too little refractive error remaining after LASIK for another laser treatment or you aren't a good candidate for a LASIK enhancement procedure for other reasons, wearing eyeglasses on a part time basis might be beneficial to sharpen your vision when needed.

For the best comfort and clarity, choose eyeglass lenses with anti-reflective coating. This coating eliminates distracting reflections and provides sharper vision in low-light conditions such as driving at night.

Many people find wearing progressive lenses offers the greatest convenience after LASIK because these line-free multifocal lenses provide clear vision at all distances without the need to carry a separate pair of reading glasses.

It also might be worthwhile to invest in high-definition lenses that can correct higher-order aberrations that regular eyeglasses cannot address.

And if you are sensitive to light after LASIK surgery, ask about photochromic lenses that darken automatically in response to sunlight for greater comfort outdoors.