Lasik Eye Surgery

Every year over one million Americans have LASIK eye surgery. When the surgery is preformed correctly and without complications, the results can be dramatic: patients with horrible eyesight can now live free from glasses and contacts. When the surgery is performed incorrectly, however, the results can be disastrous. To deal with negative results, patients are increasingly starting LASIK malpractice lawsuits.

The first major victory for a patient in a LASIK malpractice lawsuit went to Steve Post. A pilot with United Airlines, Steve went to an eye clinic in Tuscon, Arizona to receive LASIK eye surgery. The clinic made a mistake when measuring his pupil, however. Due to the clinic’s mistake, Steve’s night vision was so poor that he was forced to stop flying. In return for being forced out of his high paying job, the court awarded Steve $4 million in damages.

More recently, Mark Schiffer received $7.25 million in damages from a LASIK malpractice lawsuit he filled against his LASIK provider. The doctors performing the surgery did not notice that Mark suffered from keratoconus, an eye condition that makes LASIK surgery unsafe. As a result of his surgery, Mark’s vision became blurry and distorted, and he was forced to give up his high-paying investment banking job.

As the number of surgeries increases, so to will the number of LASIK malpractice lawsuits. Indeed, at least 5% of all LASIK patients will experience complications; this translates into 50,000 Americans a year.

If you are one of the large number of Americans who suffered complications from LASIK eye surgery, Steve and Mark’s LASIK malpractice lawsuits will likely sound promising. However, you should be forewarned that any LASIK malpractice lawsuit will likely be difficult to win. In most cases, you would have signed a consent form before undergoing the surgery. Also, there are so many variables that could have caused your complications, it will not always be clear if your doctor is at fault. In any cases, you should always consult an attorney if you are not satisfied with your surgery to find out what your legal options are.

If you are in your 40s, you are probably starting to feel the frustration of being unable to read books and menus up close. When you find yourself buying your first pair of reading glasses, you can blame presbyopia. As you get older, your eye loses the ability to focus properly. Presbyopia is unavoidable, although a number of procedures and devices have been developed to help deal with it. Until recently, however, LASIK eye surgery has not been available to fix presbyopia. Multifocal LASIK surgery may provide an easy solution for presbyopia.

In standard LASIK eye surgery the shape of the cornea is changed permanently in an attempt to correct the patient’s vision. The ophthalmologist makes a small cut in the cornea to expose the stroma, the middle section of the cornea. A laser is then used to reshape the curvature of the stroma, allowing the eye to bring things into sharper focus. Standard LASIK surgery, however, cannot fix presbyopia because is still leaves the cornea with a uniform curvature. The eye is still unable to refocus on different objects with the ease it did when the patient was young.

In multifocal LASIK surgery the cornea is given multiple curvatures. This allows different parts of the cornea to focus differently. In a sense, the surgery is designed to create bifocals directly on the patient’s corneas.

Multifocal LASIK surgery can provide an obvious benefit for the over 100 million Americans who suffer from presbyopia: freedom from bifocals! It is provides an alternative to more evasive procedures such as lens replacement surgery. In lens replacement surgery, the patient’s natural lens is replaced with an artificial lens. In multifocal LASIK surgery, the natural lens is just reshaped.

Multifocal LASIK eye surgery is still a relatively new procedure. However, a number of trials in the United States and Canada have returned promising results. In one study, conducted by Dr. Bruce Jackson of Ottawa, patients received standard LASIK on one eye, and multifocal LASIK on the other. All the patients in the study were happy with their long distance vision, and 86% were satisfied with the sharpness and clarity of their vision.

LASIK surgery is a permanent procedure. However, if the patient is not fully satisfied with his or her standard LASIK surgery, the patient can undergo secondary enhancement surgery. This secondary surgery attempts to reshape the corena a second time to account for any problems the patient may experience with the initial surgery. Between 5 and 20% of LASIK surgery patients require secondary enhancement surgery. Secondary enhancement surgery, however, cannot be performed on patients who underwent multifocal LASIK surgery. This means that as many as 20% of multifocal patients will be unsatisfied with their surgery, but unable to easily fix their vision.

While the idea of fixing presbyopia with multifocal LASIK is promising, anyone thinking of using this procedure should strongly consider his or her other options. Indeed, despite promising trials, the FDA has not yet approved the use of multifocal LASIK surgery in the United States.

While it costs a bit more than regular LASIK surgery, the results you can achieve with IntraLase surgery may well be worth it:

According to Dr. Cory Lessner with Millennium Laser Eye Centers, “By using IntraLase, coupled with the precision of this allegretto laser, we were able to deliver a treatment to Hardy that kept potential for glare and halo down.” IntraLase now has a 60,000 pulse per second upgrade from 30,000. That translates into a quicker and safer procedure, even though we’re talking about a matter of seconds. There is now pressure on the eye for 20 seconds as opposed to 40 seconds. Lessner said it’s a bit more comfortable for the patient. The improvements also mean less complications, such as corneal irregularities and scarring. “If I can make a flap that’s 100 microns thick verses 160 micron flap of somewhat variable thickness, I’ve saved myself extra tissue to actually do treatment with,” Lessner said. Studies show Intralase patients achieve 20/20 or better vision. Wood said his eyesight is the best it’s ever been. According to Lessner, it is extremely rare for patients to have any side effects. Intralase costs a bit more than traditional LASIK surgery. Each eye is about $3,000.

Source: Local10.com

Are you over 45? If so, there is a new lasik eye surgery treatment that could work for you:

Dr. Khanna, medical director of the Khanna Institute of LASIK and Refractive Surgery, is now offering a new treatment modality, the ReSTOR lens that relies on advanced multi-focal technology that allows patients to see both near and far objects without glasses. In a clinical study, 80 percent of patients receiving the ReSTOR lens reported that they no longer wore glasses for any activities at all. Khanna has found that combining these new lenses with a small incision procedure (there is no need for stitches) may provide reduced healing time and thereby significantly reduce any discomfort.

The Khanna Institute of LASIK and Refractive Surgery has offices in Westlake Village, Santa Monica and Valencia. Rajesh Khanna, MD is an internationally recognized cataract surgeon and has been noted for his skills and use of ultrasmall incisions.

Source: The Acorn

Radio commercials and magazine ads trumpet so-called \”flap and zap\” laser eye surgery - one of the fastest-growing medical procedures in the United States - which last year helped lure about 1 million blurry-eyed Americans into doctors\’ offices in the hope of throwing their glasses in the trash forever. But while laser eye surgery is about as hot as the NASDAQ index, where, in fact, some of the vision chains that perform the procedure are traded, it isn\’t for everyone.

I just wanted the right eye done, but he said, \’Your left eye has an astigmatism.\’ Experts caution people tempted to undergo LASIK - the name for the most up-to-date laser procedure - to be wary of seductive advertising and to choose a surgeon carefully; when done inexpertly, laser surgery can damage the eyes. During clinical trials for the Food and Drug Administration, researchers followed patients for only six months after the surgery. That means no one knows how a LASIK patient\’s eyes will fare five or 10 years from now. LASIK has been available for several years. But it didn\’t achieve its current level of popularity until the FDA gave its approval last October to the marketing of a new type of laser equipment designed to correct nearsightedness. For the most part, the new procedure results in markedly improved, sometimes 20 / 20 vision.

Although the FDA has not approved LASIK for correcting farsightedness, doctors use it to do so. Drugs and devices approved by the FDA for one purpose may be used by doctors for other purposes. The FDA was expected to consider formal approval this month for using LASIK for farsightedness (hyperopia) with astigmatism this month. So far, LASIK doesn\’t have the capability to correct presbyopia, the aging-related eye condition that can cause reading difficulties in people over 40.

Meanwhile, the surgery is in demand, from posh Park Avenue offices to mall-based vision centers where shoppers watch the 15-minute LASIK procedure through glass windows. The acronym LASIK stands for laser in-situ keratomileusis, which refers to the process of cutting a flap in the cornea and reshaping it with an excimer laser.

While LASIK is fast and painless for the most part - the perfectly minimalist surgery for the 21st Century - there can be complications for a small number of patients. The American Academy of Ophthalmology estimates that one to five percent of people who undergo LASIK end up with complications. Some doctors say their complication rate is lower, less than one percent. But patients are sometimes counted as successes even though they may require adjustments or a second LASIK surgery after the first one fails to achieve the desired degree of vision.

Read more from PRWeb.com

Multifocal lenses, the first of which were introduced a little more than a year ago, have eliminated or greatly reduced patients’ need for glasses or contacts, says Dr. David Cano, an ophthalmologist who performed Glater’s surgery. The two FDA-approved acrylic multifocal lenses - ReStor and ReZoom - have concentric zones through which light bends to create multiple images, says ophthalmologist Dr. Lisa Chriss. The brain learns to choose which image is correct, depending on what the eye is focusing on. After the brain adapts, the result generally is good close, intermediate and distant vision. The implant procedure takes about 20 minutes, Chriss says. Using ultrasound, the surgeon breaks up the natural lens, which is suctioned out before the multifocal lens is inserted through a tiny slit in the eye. No stitches are needed, and the surgery is performed with local anesthesia. Vision is usually good within a few days. Cano cautions that the lenses aren’t cure-alls. “They don’t always give you as perfectly clear up-close or distance (vision) as you would expect.” At night, some patients have problems with glare or halos around points of light. But the problems are “not something usually visually disabling,” he says.

Source: Bradenton Herald

Pamela Ware, just like any person seeking to get rid of glasses and contacts, wanted to get LASIK Surgery. She had friends who’s procedures were successful. Pamela made an appointment with Dr. James Boop in November of 2001. Two weeks later, she was getting LASIK Surgery. Pamela Ware says immediately after surgery her vision turned blurry in both eyes. Ware had a follow-up surgery, but it did not correct the problem. She even had a corneal transplant that still could not fix her problem. “It’s really been a nightmare. There have been so many things I missed out on. I have a daughter who graduated from college. I couldn’t see her when she graduated,” said Ware.

Source: KCBD

Do you have very dry eyes? Your LASIK surgery might be to blame.

Treatment options for dry eye vary with the cause. There are three treatment options, artificial tears, prescription of drugs or even surgery. Dietary changes can also help in reducing the severity of the symptoms. “Dry eye can be caused by conditions such as lacrimal gland disease that affects tear production, or conditions that decrease corneal sensation, such as LASIK eye surgery, long-term contact lens wear and diabetes,” said Dr. Jeffrey P. Gilbard, of the Harvard Medical School.

Source: EarthTimes.org

Is epilasik surgery just too expensive for you? Then try LASIK@Home!

Just ignore the fact that the laser machine looks like a spray-painted vacuum handle… And remember, don’t blink!

Here’s a rather enthusiastic account of how Lasik surgery chaged a life.

At my first eye exam, I couldn’t even see “The Big E,” much less which way it pointed. I had to get out of the chair and grope toward it. Rx: powder blue fairy wing eyeglasses. Next came pink ones. Later, black, navy, brown and tortoise shell. Not any more. I’m FREE! Halle-LOOOO-jah! AY-men! Can I get a WITNESS?!? LASIK eye surgery brought me from the brink of legal blindness to 20/20 vision, at least for distance. Close-up sight in the right eye is still fuzzy, and I may need to go back for a tune-up. But man! I can see!

Source: NE StatePaper.com - Thanks To LASIK: Was Blind But Now I See!