Risks & Complications Associated with LASIK

According to experienced LASIK surgeons, serious risks & complications associated with LASIK surgery are less than 1% when candidates are carefully screened. It is extremely important that you give a complete health history to your laser eye surgeon, since these may affect your candidacy for laser eye surgery. The correction that you need and the condition of your eyes will help your ophthalmologist determine which procedure and which laser is best for your needs.

Following LASIK eye surgery, some patients develop bothersome symptoms that include chronic dry eyes, problems seeing at night or having halos around lights. Other problems following LASIK surgery often involve the surgical flaps, which may fail to adhere to the eye or develop wrinkles (called stria) following surgery. Other flap-related complications include:

• Irregular astigmatism – results from a less than smooth cornea or from laser correction that is not correctly centered on the eye. Symptoms include double vision or ‘ghost-images”. In these cases, the affected eye may need to be re-treated.
• Diffuse Lamellar Keratitis (DLK) - is inflammation under the LASIK flap. In severe cases, treatment may include oral antibiotics, topical steroids or even repeat surgery, where the lens is lifted, cleaned and repositioned.
• Keratectasia or keratoconus - is bulging of the eye's surface that may result from a flap that is cut too deeply, when too much tissue is removed from the cornea or when the cornea initially was weakened as seen from corneal topography mapping prior to the LASIK surgery. Repeat surgery will most likely not remedy this condition and either a gas permeable contact lens or corneal implants are used to hold the cornea in place.

The best way to avoid complications associated with LASIK surgery is to choose a surgeon who is very experienced and very well trained. However, it is still surgery and problems, although extremely rare, can still occur.

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