Refractive Lens Exchange or LASIK vision correction?

[lowviz]

lindenbruce,

Wish you the best of luck with it. Many are happy with the procedure.

 

[NAM001]

YOUR EYES WILL NARUTALLY BECOME MORE farsighted as you age. This is great for nearsighted folkes, not so good news for us far sighted ones. Live with your eyes till you are at 55 or so. your eye doctor can monitor the change rate in your age related vision changes. Also laser work on near sighted people tend to be more of a permanant fix. for far sightedness it is a temp thing. Ypur doctorcan explain this.

 

[Carol202]

I developed a cataract in my early 50s after having surgery on my eye. My doc warned me it would happen, but I was so myopic (-10) that I was looking forward to cataract surgery. I had my lenses replace with the multi-focal intraocular lenses, and also had astigmatism correction via a Lens-X machine. It took a while for my brain to adjust, but now I have 20/20 far and near vision. However, as I was also warned by my doc, I become somewhat far-sighted in dim lighting conditions. This is only a problem in dimly lit restaurants, or when diving where the light levels are lower due to green water. The last part drives me a bit crazy, because now I can't see many of the macro critters I used to hunt down. But all-in-all, I would probably do it all over again if I could go back in time and reconsider. I often wondered why this type of surgery wasn't offered to people at an earlier age, but it looks like maybe it is now. Good luck with your surgery.

 

[herbdb]

You were fortunate. My wife had lens replacement done several years ago. She never achieved 20/20 vision near or far after multiple adjustments (they cut the lens to adjust the shape). Very disappointing. She would have been better off just getting a fix for the cataracts because she still needs glasses and her night vision is worse that it was before the replacement.

 

[lindenbruce]

Well I met with my eye doc's doc today. He basically did not encourage me to go with Refractive Lens Exchange program. His reasoning being I am too young to really consider the procedure as my God given lens is still doing it's job. And he said as long as there is nothing wrong with my God given lens and my eyes are still accommodating he did not advise replacing them with something that's still not as good as my original equipment. He said right now the risk did not justify the gains. He also said there are much better lens options currently going through trials in Europe and they won't be FDA approved here for another ten years or so. He also said there are some really exciting new technologies coming out soon as well. He said that by the time my original equipment lens' stop accommodating, another 10-13 years, there will be much better technologies out there for me to consider.

So, it looks like I am going to do the Intralase LASIK instead. I got fitted for a pair of glasses for the next month or so to let me corneas relax and normalise after so many years wearing Rigid Gas Permeables. Boy, it has been interesting wearing glasses. My depth perception is a little skewed. It's going to take some getting used to these spectacles that's for sure. The rough time frame for the LASIK is August 1st. B

 

[Tool Belt]

Thanks for the update. I have a dozen years on you. My next checkup is October, I'll pick my doc's brain again.....and I suspect I'll continue with contacts for a while.