If you’ve almost had it with the glasses and contact lenses, possibly you’re thinking about laser eye surgery to fix your vision. But what does the procedure truly require? Is my vision already too bad for Lasik?
LASIK, which is undergone by about 700,000 Americans a year.
Can your eyes be too bad to have LASIK?
If a person has a healthy cornea of normal thickness, he or she can have a diopter (the unit used to measure correction) of up to -9 or -10 and still have LASIK done. For people whose eyes are even worse than that, they may rather be prospects for another refractive surgery procedure that involves putting an artificial lens inside the eye, in front of their natural lens. We do that in patients who are incredibly nearsighted and you cannot totally remedy them with LASIK surgery.
Is it possible to be too old or too young to have LASIK?
If you do not have substantial astigmatism, the minimum age for LASIK is 18. With substantial astigmatism, the age increases to 21. The American Academy of Ophthalmology likewise mentions that ideally, a person will not get LASIK done up until after age 21, considering that an individual’s eyes might still be altering until that point. (It’s likewise possible for a person’s eyesight to keep changing after 21, too.)
In that same vein, people who are pregnant or nursing are most likely not good LASIK prospects due to the fact that their refractive mistake may be changing.
How bad does your vision have to be to be considered legally blind?
In the United States, clarity of vision almost always is revealed by a measurement system called Snellen visual acuity. Also, if your best corrected vision in one eye is worse than 20/200, but you can see better than 20/200 with restorative lenses with your other eye, you are ruled out legally blind.
Is the cost of Lasik worth it?
The nationwide typical cost of LASIK surgery is $2,259 per eye. Not surprisingly, potential patients might discover the price of LASIK disturbing, nevertheless, many people will save money with time by having the procedure, particularly those who use contacts.