Be Excellent To Each Other

'Allo,

I find myself with some spare cash and a desire to rid myself of wearing glasses to correct my short-sightednessage. I'm therefore thinking about having BURNY BURNY EYE SURGERY, which I believe is in the region of £400 per eye.*

I have tried contact leneses, which are a fag and the cost of which mounts up over a few years, and I have tried not wearing my glasses as much, which is irritating as it means I can't see very well.

So - has anyone had their eyes LAZORR ZAPPED!!1!!11!!, and can they give me any recommendations/tips/suggestions/places to avoid?

Thanking you muchly.



*The price is always quoted "per eye" - as if anyone would just get the one eye done and then think, "nah, I won't bother with the other wne. I can just wear an eye patch over it."

Gaz has and will happily tell you all I'm sure

I would in no way, shape, or form trust my future vision to a procedure that doesn't have a fifty year documented history of medical trials. Laser eye surgery has been going less than ten years so NO THANK YOU BOB.

Although, people who have had it: how do you turn the beams off? Is it a switch behind your ear, or do the beams come out all the time, setting fire to everything you look at?

I thought the eye surgery-ness had been going a good 20 years, now? Anyway. It's that or keep bumping into things, and my car's starting to look a little battered.

Gaz put me off the idea when he said it meant he couldn't see very well driving at night.
The fact that it was pitch black when we arrived in London and by the time we got out of London made for a fairly nerve-wracking journey.

WTF? Did they tint Gaz's corneas or something? Man, that guy's all about the pimping. Tch. Celica owners.

There are problems in 1 in 1000 patients that lead to loss of vision in an eye. Seriously forget about anecdotes, fuck those odds, you only get one set of eyes.

And by a process of statistical working out, 1 in a million lose sight completely.

And is exactly what I said to Gaz when he told me he had it done

I have no idea, seeing as he managed to drive perfectly well in the dark it's possible I misheard him.
Either way, I think I'll stick to contact lenses.

Since introduction of laser eye surgery, divorce rates have increased.

I wonder if you can still get beer goggles

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I was a bit crap at stats, but you've twisted that to read 1 in every 1000 eyes is blinded by the procedure, which is different to 1 in a 1000 patients losing sight in one eye.
If you assume that every patient has 2 eyes done (which isn't a safe assumption, but you'd have to to risk losing sight in both eyes), then it's actually 1 in 2000 eyes that are blinded, so I guess you could say it's more like 1 in 4 million lose sight completely.

Entirely correct Sir.

Or to put it another way "Still over 3 times more likely than winning the lottery."

I'm a bit crap at stats but aren't the odds a bit worse than that. If you lose one eye then you are much more likely to go blind in the future as you have lost the redundancy of having two eyes, which aside from stereoscopic vision must surely be the main reason our faces ended up like this.

Best thing I ever did. No lazors in my day mind, just tiny choppy knives.

Right. First things first, allow me to correct some misunderstandings here.

Laser eye treatment has been going for a lot longer than 10 years. The first surgery using the techniques used today was carried out in around 1963, but it became "common" in the late 80s. It's been at least 20 years.

The cost is in the region of £400 per eye, but only for correcting astigmatisms. Obviously this may change depending on the special offers being promoted by your chosen surgery, but if you have myopia (short sightedness) or hyperopia (long sightedness) then the cost will be more like £1,000 per eye at minimum.

When I had my surgery done (September 2007) the total cost was about £3,600 if I remember rightly. That was £1,200 per eye for the surgery, plus an extra £600 per eye to use a different cutting technique for making the initial incision into the eye. Normally they use very small blades but as I hated the idea of having a knife near my eye I opted for a laser incision instead. I also had the Wavefront technique which applies the laser very specifically to the cornea rather than doing it in a uniform way.

I'd personally recommend Ultralase as they have the best record out of the lot, and I've done a lot of research. They're not the cheapest, but as markg says, "you only get one set of eyes".

In terms of the procedure itself, it was basically completely painless. If you're squeamish about things to do with eyes then you should probably stop reading now.

They do loads of eye tests beforehand, including some quite advanced ones that map the surface of your eye in the minutest of detail. They then make recommendations for you and explain everything in as much detail as you want.

The day of the surgery you have some eye drops put in to anaesthetise the eyes, and then you're taken to the surgery and laid on a table underneath a big machine. The surgeon clamps your eye open with a metal clamp (one at a time) and covers the other eye up. A black ring is then placed over your eye and the machine does something to equalise the pressure in the eye or something - this is the most uncomfortable part of the whole operation, it just feels like someone's forcing your eyeball into the back of your skull. It's only discomfort though, not pain.

The machine (or surgeon) then goes to work making a flap in your cornea so that the laser can access the lens. Once he's done that, you're put under the laser and told to focus on the green light. This is harder than it sounds because you can't actually see properly, it's blurry. The laser goes to work and you just see a series of blue flashes. You do smell something that smells like burning flesh, but this is the smell of the laser firing and NOT you.

After that's done, the surgeon puts the flap back and washes the eye and it will start to heal straight away. The eye is unclamped and covered over while the other eye is done. The whole procedure took about 15 minutes.

Once you're off the operating table, your eyes will stream with water and be almost impossible to open. Very uncomfortable, but again not painful. Get home, take some painkillers and then go to bed (making sure to put the protective shields over the eyes to stop you scratching them).

You should wake up in the morning pain-free, no discomfort and with perfect vision.

All you need to do then is follow the aftercare instructions RIGIDLY and you'll be fine. Make sure you go for all your checkups too.

I do have trouble seeing at night, but this is not something that affects everyone and is more due to my eye muscles getting tired during the day than anything else. If I have a day where I don't look at a screen much, I can see much better at night.

My vision at night is still 1,000x better than it was before I had the surgery, it's just ever so slightly blurry (hardly worth mentioning really) and it just makes me feel a bit uncomfortable driving on pitch black roads.

My vision now is 20/10. It used to be 20/600. This means that now I can see something clearly at 20 feet that other people can only see at 10 feet, whereas previously I could only see something clearly at 600ft that others could see at 20.

//edit: That last paragraph there doesn't sound right, but I hope you guys can figure out what I mean anyway. Basically I can see stuff better than people with 20/20 vision.

Also, some people experience halo effects around lights at night. This was especially noticeable for me but it went away eventually.

It's also worth pointing out that if you're getting near to 40 there's little point having it done. When you get to 40+ your eyes start to degrade naturally anyway (why most older people need reading glasses) and the surgery can't stop that process.

It was also very emotional for me waking up in the morning, taking off the eyeshields and being able to see. The first time I had a shower after the procedure (taking great care not to get water in my eyes, as per the aftercare instructions) I noticed something different about it but couldn't put my finger on what it was. After about a minute, I realised I could see the plughole clearly and that (bizarrely) really brought home how great the procedure was.

I did, for the first couple of years after having it done.

I know a couple of people who have had it done and they clearly think it's improved their lives. Ahem. However, there are side effects that I have heard about, the deterioration in night vision being one.

Another thing to remember is this - as a optometrist friend of mine pointed out, you're going to need glasses again regardless. So as GazChap pointed out, you'll get 10-15 years tops, which I suppose is cheaper than buying contact lenses, though I wouldn't bet against some Carlos Fandango innovation in contact lenses in the next few years making surgery all but pointless.

But only reading glasses - this is an important distinction. You won't need to wear glasses again permanently, unless you're very unlucky.

Indeed, if you're completely blinded by it, you'll never need glasses again

WE GET A DOG THOUGH!

i'm lucky that I've always had excellent vision but I would never, ever, get laser surgery on the peepers. If my eyesight starts to fail (which it will, my dad has reading glasses and mum wears gegs permenantly and has for 30+ years) then I will get some glasses. Get that expensive cutty raygun away from my soft, squashy eyes Professor Frink!

Yeah, for those who aren't aware, 20/20 vision is actually perfectly average, not some gold standard. It means that at a distance of 20 feet from something, you can see the same amount of detail as someone would see at 20 feet away. Gaz's 20/10, as he's said, means if I have normal vision and I'm 10 feet from an eyechart, he can read as far down it as me when he is stood 20 feet away.

Eagles have something bonkers like 6000/10 vision.

"Ok, Mr Swoopy, cover your left eye with your wing and tell me the 3rd line"

"Sqwalk!"

"Hmm......."

"No Swoopy, that's the pattern on the chart in our Manchester office*"


* Change city if you don't live some distance from Manchester.

That shouldn't have made me laugh as much as it just did! Mr.Swoopy

"Swoopy, hold still while I vivisect your eyeball and use my knowledge of optics and geometry to estimate your vision. Hold still, I said. Stop pecking my face!"

I signed up for info from ultralase a while ago to correct an astigmatism in one eye, but then I saw a video of the eye being held open and the flap being cut away on YouTube, and it put me off.

"Sqwalk.... that's MR Swoopy!" *PECK, PECK*

It's really not a bad procedure at all. The worst bits, by far, were (in order of annoyance):

• Not being able to wash my hair for four weeks*
• Having my eyes constantly streaming with tears for about 4 hours after the surgery
• The feeling of the eyeball being pushed down as the pressure machine works its magic
• Not being able to rub my eyes for two weeks
• Being told off for not keeping my eye still**

* You can, but as you really need to avoid getting water in your eyes you have to be super-careful. As I'm a bit clumsy I decided to just not bother

** Obviously you need to keep your eye still for the laser to burn the right places on the cornea. Because they'd told me to focus on the light, coupled with the blurry vision caused by not having an effective cornea, my eyes were moving around trying to find the light again. There is, however, no need to worry - the laser machine is intelligent enough to realise that your eye isn't going to stay completely still and it doesn't fire the laser where it shouldn't.

When I had it done (2000), it was a year.

Oh yeah, its also worth my pointing out that there's more than one type of laser eye surgery.

I had LASIK, but there's also LASEK (aka PRK). I think Craster had LASEK (based on my recollection of a similar thread on WoS) which has a much longer recovery time as some layers of the cornea are actually removed and then need time to regenerate themselves.

With LASIK the cornea is just cut open and then allowed to heal, rather than actually being removed.

I think I look better with glasses on, and that allows me to not have my eyes blasted by science. So I'll give the lasers a miss for the moment.

Well, also I can't afford it.

£3,600 is a bit much, as I have short sightednessage as well as an astigmatism so it's looking like it'll be as costly as Gaz's. So, in the immortal words of my nan - fuck that for a game of soldiers.

I won't even wear contact lenses, there ain't no way I am letting some maniac want-to-be Jedi cut my eye open.

Craster, how on Earth did you not rub your eye for a year? What did you do when you/it itched/got something in it/cried/stared at a monitor for too long/etc?

I didn't pay that eight years ago, and my eyes were a damned sight (hah!) worse than yours.

You can get it for £2,000 from Ultralase if you opt not to have Wavefront nor Intralase.

Wavefront is the technology that maps the exact surface of your eye. Basically, the point of the surgery is to correct any imperfections in the surface of your cornea to return it to the normal "arc" shape.

Without wavefront, the surgeon puts in your details (how short sighted you are, that kind of thing) and the laser performs a pre-programmed surgery on your eye. It'll still work, and it'll still work bloody brilliantly - but there may still be just a few imperfections. Not enough to really affect your eyesight, though.

With wavefront, it'll only burn away the cornea where it needs to to get it back to a perfect "arc" shape.

Intralase is the name of the laser that cuts the flap in the cornea.

You can probably find somewhere that'll do it much cheaper than £2,000. But, the way I see it (hah!) I'd rather pay more* to have a proper job done than risk something going wrong at a cheaper company. "You get what you pay for" and all that. Ultralase certainly seemed the most professional of them all, and I've certainly got no complaints about their service.

* Read: I'd rather get my parents to pay more.

Okay, okay! This thread has now scared me to fuckery and I'll go and get myself to the opticians again and get some glasses....man I hate glasses -_-;

My Uncle has to have a needle in his eye for another test soon because he has Glaucoma (?spells?)

To be honest, you're so aware post-operation of not doing it in case you blind yourself, that you get used to not doing it really easily. I don't think I've rubbed my eyes since. I just blink like a motherfucker.

Yes, you should. Failing that, I'll tell you about the time I had detached retinas.

Please don't tell me that on Friday....if you join us that is

Meh, I was going to get this done, but I'm not sure it's worth it now.

I wasn't really considering it, but now I'm definitely not considering it.
I'm sure I can find better things to spend a few grand on.

Exactly, I could dive the world for that! I've had my specs/contacts for so many years now I'm not as bothered about it as I used to be.

BEEX house mayhap?

Unfortunately houses cost more than a few grand.

Smashing my cock between bricks made of gold sounds a better use of a few grand, frankly.