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Old 22nd August 2008, 11:27   #1
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Laser Eye Surgery - LASIK discussion

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Originally Posted by hkanitkar View Post


@Sam, anyone undergone Lasik - can you provide me with links on the web about lasik ( if any ) ?? I have googled some bits, but I would like to know more about it.
Laser Eye Surgery Centre in India, Eye Laser Surgery in India, Lasik Eye Centre in India.
This is where I got mine done 3 years ago.

From the same website

What is LASIK?

Quote:
LASIK stands for ‘Laser In-Situ Keratomileusis’ which means ‘ to shape the cornea within its layers with the use of the Excimer laser’.
Quote:
Hi-tech solution combining advanced computer technology with laser precision: LASIK is a skilled procedure that combines the state-of-the-art computer technology with advanced laser precision. While the earlier laser procedure viz PRK treated the surface of the cornea, LASIK treats the inner tissue of the cornea and restructures it in a manner which grains down myopia (minus power) and hypermetropia (plus power).
Mods, may we request for a new thread called LASIK discussion? Many thanks.

Last edited by Sam Kapasi : 22nd August 2008 at 11:30.
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Old 22nd August 2008, 12:09   #2
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Yes please. I want real life experiences, esp from junta who bike a lot, or people who are excessively hooked on computers about the long term benefits/recurrence.
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Old 22nd August 2008, 12:16   #3
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Hi Sam, its a very useful information for many. I had considered doing a lasik in 2005 but out of many mixed up informations and negative impressions and real fear (within myself) I postponed it many times and atlast it never happend.

My eyes are (I assume) perfect subject to any research minded optometrist. Right eye is -13.00 and left is -3.00. Means in effect I dont have a right eye (it has a very 'out of focus' vision). With my left eye closed, I cant see your long hair or stylish goatee from as close as 1 meter ! I think that makes my eye condition clear to you.

After coming back to bangalore end of 2005, many have suggested me different places like 'narayana nethralaya' here, another famous hospital in hyderabad, another famous one in Ollur (tamilnadu) and few others.

What I need is an expert research minded doctor who can study my eyes and veins then come to a conclusion that would suit my age and case. So, infact its my fear again, that is stopping me from going to any doctor at present.

Lasik is a money making field as I understand. I dont know how sincerely they analyse for a positive lasik patient. Lasik machines are very expensive and they would want to cover up the cost at a faster pace by taking up every enquiry that comes to them.

I seriously want a solution for my issue, but not ready to be taken for a ride. If something goes wrong with my only working (left) eye, I will never be able to do anything in life without a support, neither enjoy team-bhp, nor ride/drive around the crowded places as I do now without any issues !

Your 2 cents greatly appreciated ! It is the most important information in my life that can come from anyone.

Last edited by shajufx : 22nd August 2008 at 12:20.
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Old 22nd August 2008, 12:24   #4
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Sam, I too have been thinking about lasik since some time now. My prescription is -2.25 and -1.75 (with cylindrical correction). I have gotten mixed reviews from people. Some say my power is not that high hence I should refrain. My questions, also for the benefit of others, are:

1. How safe is Lasik?

2. Is it a permanent corrective surgery? Meaning, is there a chance of my eyesight becoming weak sometime in the future, warranting the need for glasses or another lasik surgery?

3. Whats the cost and time involved? Does it need one to get admitted into a hospital?

4. What precautions does one need to take pre/post surgery, and going forward for the future?

Your experiences, as well as those who have got lasik done would be immensely beneficial.

P.S. My eyes are are intolerant to contact lenses.

Last edited by nishantgandhi : 22nd August 2008 at 12:34.
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Old 22nd August 2008, 12:28   #5
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When I was three, I was injured in my right eye. So I have seen countless eye specialists in all parts of India and also undergone multiple surgeries.
At the age of 17 or so I started getting number in my left eye too and I wear -1 glasses.
We have a family friend who does LASIK. During a routine checkup, I asked him if the vision in my right eye could improve with LASIK, and if I could completely get rid of -1 in my left eye.
He clearly told me that he can do LASIK, but does not recommend it as Indians(and other people having similar genes) have thin cornea. He has seen a success rate of 98% odd. and he feels 2% is too big a risk.
If I still want to go ahead first I should see a cornea super specialist at AIIMS, and they will do some corneal analysis for thickness etc., but from what he has seen, he would not recommend it.

Since left eye is my only working eye, with best vision of 6/9 in my right eye, he says don't touch the left eye at all.
As for right eye 6/9 is pretty decent and not point getting it worse.

Since in your case -13 is a huge number, you can take the risk. So instead if visiting a LASIK specialist, visit a corneal super specialist first. There number is very few in India, with only big research oriented hospitals like AIIMS hiring those.
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Old 22nd August 2008, 12:29   #6
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shajufx, I would suggest dont bother with Lasik at all. Even a 0.1% risk in your case is not acceptable. -3.00 on your good eye isnt bad at all.

Even people with a squint start losing vision on one eye, as they start growing. So you are not alone !
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Old 22nd August 2008, 12:35   #7
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I have -6.5 L and -6.7 R and thought many times about it. but I am too scared of the process.

May be this thread can help. I am subscribed to it
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Old 22nd August 2008, 13:44   #8
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I've been wearing glasses for a long time and I've been to some really good old school opthamologists who are more concerned about the person rather than making a quick buck.

Some of the questions & conclusions we came to

1. Why do you want to do eye correction surgery? Do you have a complex wearing glasses? Is there a stigma attached to wearing glasses?

2. Would lenses suit you? Some have sensitive eyes. Some have cylinderical power which rules out the possibility of normal lenses.

3. If one has cylinderical power, corrective surgery might not help. Even if -1 is leftover or comes back one would be back to wearing glasses.

4. There have been cases of dry eyes after corrective surgery. This leads to people having to have their eyes hydrated constantly using eye drops. Especially if one is in the IT sector this problem "could" be more.

5. Long term effects are not exactly known.

6. Sharpness of vision could be hampered. Cases were folks who drive in the night cannot make out the fine distinction between darkness and a buffalo standing in the road until its too late. :-)

There are quite a few people who haven't had any problems at all. But these were some of the risks involved.
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Old 22nd August 2008, 13:59   #9
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My personal experience with glasses - part 1

I started wearing prescription glasses since I was 7 years old. It was a big blow to my mother and father who never ever wore glasses.

My earliest memories involve being called double-battery, four-eyes and other mean things that kids say. More than anything else, it was the dependency that made me cry.

I had no help from home, neither of my parents had any experience with myopia. it is a lot easier as a child when either one of your parents has the same problem.
To make matters worse, my handicap would progress each year and sometimes my glasses would break while playing.

I remember going to the doctors and wearing those really strange glasses and he would replace lens after lens till I could read clearly. The sorry part of the whole affair was that the doctor had to rely on the judgement of an 8 year old to get the right number.

Today the scene is a lot different withvarious machines that focus inside your eye and are able to get an accurate correction, sometimes without even reading a thing.

My mother always wished I never wore glasses. She always treated them as a handicap, akin to wearing a hearing-aid. I think this was a mistake on her part as she made me very conscious of the fact that i was wearing glasses.

I remember at the age of 14 I visited Dr. Paritosh Cholia and he said I was just TOO young for contact lenses.
I wore my usual cheap plastic glasses through school.

When I was 16 Dr. Cholia finally gave in to my mother and agreed to supply contact lenses. At this time, it was common to supply Hard Lenses (only they were not really called Hard lenses, as there was no other comparo)
Dr. Cholia suggested a new kind of contact lens called GP )Gas permeable) which was eventually to be called semi-soft lenses.

I remember my parents paid almost Rs.2000/- for my first pair. This was a lot of money in those days and my parents were not very well-off.

The first year was horror for me. While my eyes adapted well, I would travel a lot by bus and train the next year and the slightest bit of dust would make me cry like a baby.
At 18, I got my motorbike and if a speck of dust got into my eyes, I had to pull over and howl.

I never went out without my sunglasses. I even thought about wearing complete wrap arounds.
But I never went out of the house without my contact lenses.

Unless I lost one. I remember those horrible times on my knees in the bathroom, poking at every drop of water on the floor, hoping it was my lens. I could barely see properly, unless I took the other lens off and wore my glasses to hunt for the fallen lens. Sometimes the tears in my eyes - scared and sorry - having lost my lens and worried about my dad getting mad at me would make it more difficult to find my lenses.
Then I would have to go back to the doctor and sit it out, waiting for my next prescription piece.

Contact lenses were the domain of doctors. Opticians only made glasses.
Sometimes lenses would get scratched and I would wear them still, they were expensive.
Sometimes my eyes would get infected, no doubt due to some carelessness or the fact that I had not washed my hands properly.

These lenses could also be kept under plain water in an emergency, in case I had to spend the night at a friends house. Once a girl picked up a glass of water and drank both my lenses that were inside.

A lot of my troubles were to change with the advent of soft lenses.

Last edited by Sam Kapasi : 22nd August 2008 at 14:01.
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Old 22nd August 2008, 14:16   #10
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Sam Kapasi View Post
My mother always wished I never wore glasses. She always treated them as a handicap, akin to wearing a hearing-aid. I think this was a mistake on her part as she made me very conscious of the fact that i was wearing glasses.

Sam, Even I feel the same way. There are still a handicap for me. Even though my eye sight is -3 on each eye, without the glasses my life is gone. Sometimes, I miss the magic moments when my son calls me to show his drawings/colorings that he did, and damn I shall be searching for my glasses, which I always forget where I kept , and when I come to my son, his enthusiasm is down.

Damn, I hate those weights on my nose (already have dark spots on my nose where the glasses rest), stuck to me from my 7th class. Its a handicap I have to live with. Sometimes I wonder when it will end... when...God Give me a break ...
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Old 22nd August 2008, 14:21   #11
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My personal experience with glasses - part 2

By the time I was 22 or 23 a lot of things had changed.

Soft lenses had arrived and they were more affordable than my GP lenses.
Not only that, but now opticians were selling lenses.

Every optician now had a machine that could test and gauge your eyes and good opticians could now sell you lenses in a few minutes! What they did was have the lenses ready in steps of -0.25 in most common numbers, ranging from -1 to -5 and that was that.
While bausch and Lomb was the best and pioneers in this technology, CIBA was available too and I found no difference in comfort.

What was incredible was the result. For a person who had worn super-uncomfortable lenses most of his life, the new soft lenses felt like 2 little drops of water in my eyes.
Also it was now impossible to judge if I was wearing lenses.

GP lenses were smaller than my iris, if you looked hard enough you could see the outline. The soft lenses had a larger diameter and were easier to wear.

Downsides: You could end up wearing them inside out by mistake.
You could tear them if you weren't careful.

If you rubbed your eyes too hard, you could dislodge them (A common problem I had with GP lenses earlier, a couple of times getting my GP lens lodged firmly under my eyelids)

You had to be extra careful and now no longer could use just water.

In those days there were 2 separate liquids. One to clean the lens and the other to store it in. If you went anywhere, or even went to spend the night, you needed a little kit with your lens holder and the 2 bottles.

Spending the night spontaneously at a friends was out of the question.
The chances of losing and not finding the lenses were now greater as they would adhere to any surface on the flight down to the ground.

And yet I persevered. It was my mothers legacy and I was stuck with it. I would not leave home with my glasses on, choosing to wear them for 14 to 18 hours at a stretch sometimes.
My close friends had all seen me with my glasses at home and they would tease me.

Come down and take the book! Dwayne would shout from down. (we had no mobile phones)
No you come up.
Hahaha you're not handsome right now?

NO I would say laughing.

This word handsome stuck on till I was much older. As I grew older i cared less and often I would go out with my glasses on. A common joke would be to suddenly stare at my face and say
What happened?
What happened? I would ask, often forgetting the glasses on my face.
You don't look handsome today.
hahaha.
All of us still laugh about it today.
Often I thought about getting an operation done. Even went for a consulation.
My cousin had an operation done, he had a permanent lens implanted in his eyes and one of them went wrong, it turned a bit and they had to cut him open again.

later he did another operation that altered his eyes from inside. it was not a laser guided operation and it was a big mistake. Things did go wrong and it was finally by the 3rd operation that he was totally rid of his glasses. His number was less than mine, -3.

Today it has been about 11 years since his procedure and he is well and fine.
Lasik was introduced in India by the time I was around 28 or 29. It was new and even though I studied it, I had no courage. Plus people suggested I wait for a few years.

I waited with my mother's legacy in my head.

Disposable soft contact lenses had already arrived, the ones you would wear for 30 days and then simply throw away. They were made by Bausch and Lomb in Ireland and you could buy them in packs of 10
(I had to buy 20 as I had 2 different numbers in my eyes)

I had started carrying an extra pair in my bag to work and now the regret had all but gone when they were lost. They now cost around Rs. 200/- each ad I was earning now. Plus the problem of dust and discomfort was greatly reduced.

I still had problems, when I would go swimming (for example) I could not see clearly. it would be stupid to wear glasses in the pool and I could barely see without them.
But better to be blind than have the girls see me with my glasses.

PLUS the sadness of not being able to wear all the cool sunglasses that everyone else could....

The cool thing was that Bausch And Lomb had released an all-in-one solution and so from 2 bottles, I had to only carry one. It was called Renu (pronounced renew, not renu, lol). Still available.


But worst of all would be to come home piss-drunk on a fun night, lose my lenses in my stupor, wake up in the morning with a headache and not know where the crap my glasses were either!!!

Last edited by Sam Kapasi : 22nd August 2008 at 14:26.
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Old 22nd August 2008, 14:26   #12
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Yeah. I have -5 in both eyes, and honestly, i wanna get rid of the bleeping specs. there was once this flight I missed because at 5am, the specs had rolled off behind the bed post, the only guest house staff awake had a negative IQ and couldn't find my specs, and I was like this stupid blind bat flailing and grunting and shouting but still unable to find the darned specs.

I had this other time when I broke BOTH specs in the course of a day, and morning when I woke up, used unwashed hands for putting contact lenses only succeeding in burning my eyes. Went two hours late to office because i was so good for nothing.

Yes, I want my life back. But no 2% for me :(
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Old 22nd August 2008, 14:31   #13
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hitanshu, you are in Delhi, visit a corneal specialist. Since those guys don't have any money to make from LASIk, they will tell you honestly whether you have a thick enough cornea to take the risk
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Old 22nd August 2008, 14:34   #14
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My LASIK Operation - Part 1

I was a lot older now and had been wearing glasses for 25 years of my life.

I had no reason to worry about my glasses, no more than a divorced man of 32 years has to.
Of course I did!! lol I am the Yeti® not the four-eyes-Yeti®.

I struggled with my then lenses. My friend and I had made a pact to do this lasik surgery together.
Finally one day when I spoke about it one drunk night, I received a lot of encouragement from my then girlfriend. I discussed the matter with my father, who knew all my problems and knew that it was my mothers greatest wish for me to wake up and see clearly.

It had been a long time since my number had progressed. I had been reading a lot and researching LASIK as it seemed like my best option.
In my research I came across a cleverly named website called LASIKINDIA dot com. Well named and very well made.
What struck me most about the site was the sharing of information, more than procedure.

I went to the clinic and I found the same sharing here. I was able to pick up (for free) some books and booklets, many written by the doctor that ran the lasik clinic himself.
I picked up all the books and went home and discussed it again with my father.

After reading the books and understanding that it was a corneal operation, we decided again to visit the doctor to understand the risks involved.

I called my friend, but he chickened out. I hated my glasses so much that I was driven and possessed. I wanted my glasses out!

I could not sleep at the excitement of being able to see clearly in all conditions.

Last edited by Sam Kapasi : 22nd August 2008 at 14:35.
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Old 22nd August 2008, 14:35   #15
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I am wearing prescription glasses since I was in 1st standard. A teacher in school noticed that it was too much of an effort for me to make out what was written on the board if I sat on the back benches, and informed my mom of the same. I was promptly taken to a doctor, who figured that I needed glasses, with the number -0.75.
I remember my first of glasses, a thick,square, white and brown plastic pair. I avoided them at all costs, and wore them only when I was sitting on a bench far away from the board, and writing down stuff. I continued to avoid wearing them, until I was in 4th or 5th, when my years of -.75 suddenly jumped to -1.25. After that, I was pretty much a regular user.
Now, my life seems incomplete without my glasses. Right now,if I remove my glasses, I cant even see what is written on a door in a fairly large font, less than 10 feet away from me. It appears as a blue blur.
Heck, if I remove my glasses, I cannot even see this post I am typing, if I maintain my normal distance. I have to lean and sit very close to the screen, if at all I have to make out something without my glasses.
I am okay with all this though, the only problem I face is my glasses fog up if I am wearing a helmet and riding in the rains. But that also isnt much of an issue because these days I commute by bus.
Very briefly, corrective surgery was considered for me, but decided to back out. I am too afraid of it. Cant even bring myself to wear lens.
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