Choosing a refractive surgeon for correcting your vision

How should you choose a surgeon for refractive surgery? Here’s what ophthalmologist Steven Wilson thinks.

If you are considering refractive surgery, make sure you:

• Compare. It’s important to think beyond the risk involved with the procedure itself. Risk also varies from device to device depending on the manufacturer, and from surgeon to surgeon depending on their level of experience with a particular procedure.
• Don’t base your decision simply on cost and don’t settle for the first eye center, doctor, or procedure you investigate. It’s important to consider that these decisions about your eyes and the refractive surgery will affect you for the rest of your life.
• Be wary of eye centers with overblown claims. If you see them advertise, “20/20 vision or your money back” or “package deals,” be skeptical. There are never any guarantees in medicine.
• Read. It is important for you to do your research. Read the patient handbook your doctor should give you, created by the manufacturer of the device used to perform the procedure. Ask for this handbook and talk to your doctor about his/her outcomes (successes as well as complications) compared to the results of studies outlined in the handbook.

“Keep in mind when choosing a surgeon, it’s not how many surgeries the surgeon has done, it’s how many were done correctly,” Dr. Wilson says.

What about the negative stories I’ve seen online?

“Most of those sites were started by angry patients who had their surgery done at a place that wasn’t reputable,” Dr. Wilson says.

“Some of them may have been candidates for PRK, but they went to a center that only does LASIK. Patients who aren’t properly selected for surgery can end up with a condition called ectasia, which can result in having to wear contacts or even eventually needing a corneal transplant. In other cases, patients may have had dry eye before their procedures, but they weren’t treated for it before surgery,” he says.