Quality of Life After LASIK: The Picture Remains Hazy

The reason appears to be that the answer is unknown. Because of these concerns, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently began a large-scale study to determine quality of life after LASIK.3 It is critical that patients and primary care physicians understand ophthalmologists' financial sta...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inAmerican family physician Vol. 82; no. 9; p. 1044
Main Author Bieler, Bert M., MD
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States American Academy of Family Physicians 01.11.2010
Subjects
Contact lenses
Dry Eye Syndromes - etiology
Eye surgery
Humans
Internal Medicine
Keratomileusis, Laser In Situ - adverse effects
Lasers
Literature reviews
Medical personnel
Patient satisfaction
Physicians
Quality of Life
Task forces
World literature
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Summary:The reason appears to be that the answer is unknown. Because of these concerns, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently began a large-scale study to determine quality of life after LASIK.3 It is critical that patients and primary care physicians understand ophthalmologists' financial stake in the LASIK procedure. The laser costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, and many ophthalmologists own their own laser. [...]there is a clear financial motivation to perform more procedures. According to industry statistics, more than 14 million laser vision procedures were performed in North America between 1997 and 2009.4 A recent meta-analysis reported a 95.4 percent success rate.5 Using these industry-accepted statistics, we can calculate that more than 600,000 Americans “failed” the procedure, a statistic combining adverse effects and poor vision quality.
Bibliography:SourceType-Other Sources-1
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ObjectType-Correspondence-1
ISSN:0002-838X
1532-0650