Can I Have Same Day LASIK Eye Surgery?

In a time of instant gratification, it might be tempting to have LASIK surgery on the same day as your LASIK consultation, especially if your LASIK surgeon is putting pressure on you and offering financial incentives to do so. But beware! It is medically inappropriate for you to have same day LASIK eye surgery as your consultation. We explain the reasons why.

Importance of a Separate LASIK Consult

During a comprehensive LASIK consultation to see if you are an ideal candidate your eyes must be dilated. By dilating your eyes, your doctor is doing three things:

1. Confirming stability and accuracy of the amount of vision correction required
2. Verifying the health of your eyes, specifically the retina
3. Ensuring there is no onset of cataracts

These three things are mission critical to ensure you have an optimal long-lasting outcome from your LASIK surgery.

Why Same Day LASIK Eye Surgery is Unsafe

Did you know that the eye tracker on the laser that is used to reshape your cornea during LASIK surgery does not work if your eyes are dilated! That’s right, when your pupils are enlarged from the dilation, the eye tracker is unable to track or will track in inaccurately, and dilation can take 4 to 8 hours to reverse. This is why same day LASIK eye surgery is an unsafe procedure if dilation is done on the same day.

The Risks of Same Day LASIK

So, if your LASIK surgeon is offering you the option of same day LASIK as your consultation, then your eyes have likely not been dilated, and you have not been thoroughly & completely evaluated for LASIK. The possible risks of proceeding with same day LASIK eye surgery are:

• Your prescription level has not been verified as stable and your LASIK results will not last.
• You may have undetected retina tears which could get worse resulting in vision loss.
• If you have cataracts that have progressed to a certain point, LASIK results could be very short lived.

Finally, any non-urgent medical procedure requires the patient to be thoroughly informed about the risks and benefits both in general and specific for that person. Ethically the physician and his/her team has an obligation to provide enough time for this to occur which means having an opportunity to read the consent they will sign on the day of the procedure, have enough time ask questions, and finally enough time to seriously consider their decision to proceed. This generally cannot be accomplished during a 1 or 2-hour office visit and the patient should be given at least one overnight period in order to be confident in their decision.

Our Stance on Same Day LASIK

At Providence Eye & Laser Specialists, Dr. Mozayeni and Dr. Nunnery, our LASIK surgeons, dilate every patient and he personally checks your vision and the health of your eyes. Then, if he determines that you are an ideal candidate who is likely to have a long lasting optimal result, he will approve you for LASIK surgery but never same day LASIK as your consultation. The soonest he will do it would be the next day. He cares about every patient that much, and only does the right thing not the fastest.

To learn more about our LASIK eye surgery process and standards of excellence for our patients at Providence Eye, call us at 704-540-9595!