And like with any surgical procedure unexpected complications can occur.
Can u go blind from laser eye surgery.
Total blindness where you have no light perception caused by laser eye surgery is extremely rare.
Patients are often concerned.
Will laser eye surgery harm their vision.
To those who worry they could go blind from laser eye surgery for good lasik candidates with good surgeons i can safely say that the risk of laser eye surgery can be viewed with the same level of anxiety as contacts.
Technically there is an exceedingly small risk of blindness with laser eye surgery but it is lower than the risk of wearing monthly contact lenses for one year so a risk that everyone seems to accept as perfectly reasonable.
It s estimated that the chances of going blind as a result of laser eye surgery are around 1 in 5 million.
Lasik surgery is considered to be a fairly low risk and highly successful elective surgery.
The american refractive surgery council states that no one has ever gone completely blind from laser eye surgery with inadequate aftercare being the direct cause of any laser eye surgery induced blindness.
Is there a risk of going blind.
As to whether or not laser eye surgery can blind you well theoretically the answer to this is yes but the chances are estimated to be less than 1 in 5 million procedures.
And in reality there isn t a risk of going blind with modern technology.
To put that in perspective you are more than twice as likely to get 5 numbers plus the bonus ball in the national lottery calculated at a 1 in 2 330 636 chance than you are to go blind because of a laser eye procedure.
The american refractive surgery council reports that there are no actual cases of blindness resulting directly from lasik surgery and the success rate is as high as 96 percent.
Most lasik risks and complications are mild and can be managed successfully.
That said it s important to remember that lasik is surgery.
As specialist laser eye surgeon mr glenn carp explains in the short video below there is an extremely small opportunity of going blind as a result of laser eye surgery.