After the Surgery
The day after the surgery the vision will be much better but do not expect perfection! Remember, your eye has just had surgery and some blurring must be expected. Usually, the eye will continue to improve over a period of 2-4 weeks or even longer as Dr Buzard will discuss with you dependent on your personal healing patterns and the medications that you will be using.
You will begin using your eye drops four times daily as instructed by Dr Buzard. Precautions include avoiding rubbing the eyes directly, wearing eye shields at night if you tend to be restless at night and to avoid direct water in the eyes for 1-2 weeks. While it is important to avoid direct eye trauma, it is comforting to know that disruption of the flap of corneal tissue is extremely rare. Some things you can do to enhance the improvement in your eyes include lots of artificial tears, avoiding irritating fumes and smoke and taking your drops as directed.
In most cases only a single surgery is needed, however, additional surgery can be performed to enhance the results of surgery in about 10% of the cases and this surgery is usually performed within 1-3 months of the original surgery. If required, the surgery usually involves lifting the flap of corneal tissue with a special technique developed by Dr. Buzard and is no more painful or involved than the original surgery. Sometimes simple astigmatism problems can be resolved on the day of the visit with small incisions directly in the cornea. It is important to know that while additional surgeries can be performed, in most cases the eye will improve on its own and inappropriate haste in enhancing the surgery is usually unnecessary and unwise.
One nice thing about LASIK surgery is the ability to return to sports activities and normal lifting immediately after the surgery. Because LASIK surgery does not weaken the eye, the normal restrictions of lifting and bending after eye surgery are not present here although you should be careful to avoid direct eye trauma and water in the eye for several weeks.
Finally, during the first few weeks, either reading
or even seeing in the distance may be slightly blurred
as the eye is healing. If this is the case, be sure to tell
Dr Buzard so that he can help you during this period.
Once your surgery has stabilized, usually after one to several months, the results should be quite stable over the remainder of your life. Remember though that our eyes can have minor changes over time, including problems with reading over age 40 and cataracts often occurring over age 60. Think of your new surgery as a fine pair of glasses and the expectations you would have of the glasses will be similar to your expectations from LASIK surgery.
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