Lasik

Tomorrow I’m going to make a trek to Renton to give a visit to Clearly Lasik for an evaluation. This place was recommended to me by one of my wife’s friends, though I did a bit of research before deciding on this place. I checked out the place my Optomitrist recommended and the two places my vision plan has contracts with.

What amazes me is when I talked with the various places, what I heard was that many people don’t do their research. They just “want it done” and don’t ask too many questions. I dunno, but my eyes are kind of important to me and I want to make sure the right people are operating on them. It also helps that my wife was around to drill the importance of doing this into my head.

One of the places I didn’t end up choosing, Pacific Cataract and Laser Institute, actually had quite a bit of information on the various things that can go wrong with Lasik and what the typical percentages were. It didn’t seem particularly biased towards them–after all I chose a different place to go. Even so, I wanted to compare the different places.

Here is the questions I asked. They may not be the best questions, but they were the criteria I used. Maybe they’ll help you out, or not.

• # of Lasik surgeons and optomistrists at the site you are visiting.
• How long have they been doing Lasik? Lasik was FDA approved in 1996. Extra credit for experience with RK or PRK.
• Number of Lasik surgeries performed. Make sure you can get a breakdown of Lasik surgeries versus other kinds of surgeries.
• What is the complication rate (i.e. percentage of patients who have a problem of some kind)?
• Percentage of clients with 20/40 or better with 1 treatment (20/40 is the magic point where you don’t need “corrective lenses” put on your drivers license). You may also want to ask about 20/30 or 20/20. If you can get numbers down to your prescription range, even better.
• Retreatment percentage, i.e. percentage of patients who come back and ask for a “touch-up.”
• What technology is used? Wavefront seems to be the hot thing right now and will pick up and help fix more problems in the eye.
• Cost (an obvious one)
• Will my health/vision insurance cover some part of this?
• The series of events from evaluation to post-op visits.

The bottom line for me was: experience. Dr. King and Mockovak have 50,000 Lasik surgeries between them. The others didn’t even come close.