Shopping For a LASIK Doctor

Shopping For a LASIK Doctor

Finding the right LASIK doctor is one of the major problems that a prospective LASIK patient will have. An ethical LASIK surgeon will pay more attention to gauging your eligibility and your health issues instead of focusing on how to take your hard earned money. The doctor you choose should already have extensive experience in performing laser eye surgeries. You can ask him or her about past patients in order to assess his or her track record. A good physician will just about always get positive reviews from their patients.

In order to assess how extensive your doctor's experience is, ask him the duration of his or her practice in laser eye surgery, and how familiar he or she is with the different LASIK eye surgery techniques. Look for a doctor who has been performing the procedure for at least three years. This is usually long enough to demonstrate a solid reputation or a disastrous one.

There is also the question of the frequency of the LASIK doctor's operations. The doctor should have already performed this procedure enough times in the last few years that he is already well versed in modern procedures and technologies. If your doctor has done fewer than 500 operations during this time, perhaps you should consider another doctor.

Your surgeon should also be able to provide his or her success rate of his or her previous operations. Excellent LASIK doctors will almost always get an end result of at least 20/40 vision for their patients. You should note, however, that the aim of LASIK is vision correction, and not vision restoration. In other words, your eyes having 20/40 vision as an end result is already an achievement. Ask your doctor how many of his patients have achieved 20/40 vision after the first surgery. Your doctor might say that he or she has higher than 90% success rate of giving at least 20/40 vision to his or her patients; if this is the case, ask for proof. In addition, 50% of your prospective doctor's patients should have achieved 20/20 vision.

To gauge how much importance your doctor gives to his or her patients' health instead of their money, ask for examples of cases when he or she discouraged the patient from having the surgery, and why. Not everyone is eligible for laser eye surgery. Extensive examinations and tests must be done beforehand to determine if LASIK is applicable to the patient's eye problems.

A respected LASIK surgeon will not only have a good reputation, but also will walk you through the whole process, including all necessary pre-examination prior to surgery. This is paramount, considering the inherit importance of these types of surgeries. Your pre-exam appointment will consist of a Q and A, which should cover any issues you are concerned about. Interviewing other LASIK patients should give you a good idea of the quality of service you can expect. Believe it or not, there are LASIK offices that offer little or no post-operative care. This would obviously be a red flag.

Your prospective eye surgeon may also be able to recommend some financing options in order to deal with the costs that the operation may entail. It is important to note that some financing options may come at a high cost, that cost being in the form of high interest rates. Always look over the fine print when it comes to financing a LASIK procedure, or any thing, for that matter. If the doctor to whom you went to is open to these questions and entertains all of them, you may have gone to the right doctor to perform your LASIK procedure.

By Frank Rodriguez

Shopping For a LASIK Doctor