What is Lasik Surgery?

Nowadays, almost all ads talking about Lasik surgery claim that the surgery is the perfect way around eye glasses and contacts. Having taken a closer look at the surgery, the FDA later criticizes such ads and report that these ads were completely untrue and flat. FDA’s subsequent endeavors paved the way for the shutting down of these claims. Therefore, you should be very careful to what you read in newspapers and journals.

All Lasik marketing techniques focus on the idea that the surgery is eyeglass free. Some techniques even show people without their eyeglasses. Then there are some testimonials made by some celebrities advising you to head to a particular Lasik specialist and promised you special gifts such as raffles, free seminars, leaflets, financial encouragements to newcomers and of course promise of an improvement of vision by a factor of 20/20. All these are just a small subset of techniques used by these ads in order to lead to the operation room. There are not concerned about these nonsensical talks.

You should notice that the techniques described in the previous paragraph are perfectly acceptable advertising. However, many of these techniques are strongly disapproved by honest Lasik surgeons as well as notorious organizations and of course the FDA.

Here are the drawbacks of the Lasik surgery: let us consider a clever consumer. He will immediately notice these sweet words aiming at attracting you to only find the right and suitable place to get your surgery done. There is no hint to help you assess hidden information, which is definitely useful, not in the ads. Of course, honest Lasik surgeons will not waste their time explaining you the drawbacks of the surgery at the first meeting, so if you have not done any background reading about the surgery you will not be able to know whether he is frank or not.

Lasik surgery is a very intricate and tricky process that relies on the motion of the following tools: the microkeratome which is a special knife used for surgery purpose only and an excimer laser which is managed by a dedicated computer. The human body encompasses two delicate and intricate organs. The previous two sentences therefore raise concerns about Lasik surgery. The tools may be monitored by faulty components be it in the hardware or in the software. Another possibility is the mistakes made by the surgeon.

There is a need of new rules and laws governing this surgery. Although patients are usually happy with the results of the surgery, others are experiencing serious vision difficulties after the surgery. These problems include halo vision, starbursts as well as poor low-light vision that obviously increase their inability to drive at night. There are some minor cases in which patients are said to be blind after the surgery. This usually occurs when there were some serious mistakes during the process. These types of issues are not noticed immediately after the surgery and they will not be noticed until the nerves and muscles of the eyes are reported unable to cope with the surgery. The percentage of patients not happy with the surgery compared to those who have a successful surgery is definitely not high enough to be ominous. However in order to protect these unhappy people, a new special law was born: Lasik Injury Law.

The main responsible of all these issues is called competition. Because of tight battle between Lasik practitioners, they have to use illegal weapons. These include a poor description of the process, overstatement, euphemism. The reasons are now clear: Lasik tools are costly and also to maintain, of course the surgeon spent a tremendous amount of his time to study the ins and outs of the surgery and they are assisted by well-paid assistants. To meet these costs, Lasik clinics need a minimum number of patients every month and this pressure therefore paves the way for false advertisements.

Paul Moss