the Price of LASIK Surgery

The price was for wavefront laser eye lens reshaping (vision corrective eye surgery) on an adult with mild myopia and strong astigmatism.

The guy was an eye surgeon specializing in vision corrective surgery. Prices are pretty much the same across the board $3000/eye.

Top of the line, baby. At least the equipment is. So were the results. 20/16 left eye, 20/17 right eye. And the left one was the one with massive astigmatism (over 2 diopters). Scary as all get out, though, having a big thing slice open my eye and zap off chunks of it with a laser. I'm glad beyond words for the anesthetic eye drops.

I had to be driven home, of course. Having cotton balls taped to my eyelids sort of made that necessary. I got the usual regime of antibiotic eye drops and a couple review visits. Things healed nicely and I only regressed a little from my 20/15 both eyes at my first checkup.

A bad surgeon can screw up even the best equipment, but even a great surgeon can't make up for outdated technology. The latest eye surgery widgets have more or less fixed the "halo" or light ring problem. In fact in some cases (albeit rare, but documented) the results have been even better than the theoretical best possible human vision of 20/6. But fancy equipment costs fancy money.

Sometimes, though, you can get a surgeon who leases the equipment in off hours from another doctor, but middle of the night eye surgery with a doctor not quite as familiar with the machinery as the guy who owned it didn't seem appealing to me. I would also have had to travel to Nevada to have the surgery done that way (closest doc I could find who did it that way). I was okay with paying the extra $2K.

If you're considering it, your vision needs to be stable for three years (i.e. it can't get better or worse over that time) and you need to have healthy eyes (no glaucoma or diabetes or that kind of stuff).