Am I a candidate for refractive surgery?

It is not for everyone, or at any point in life: first we check your prescription, your corneal shape and the ocular surface.

Refractive surgery corrects your prescription by reshaping the cornea, the clear window at the front of the eye. Whether it works well depends less on how much you see and more on the state of that cornea, so the answer does not come from a quick visit: it comes from a full workup.

What we check first

• That your prescription has been stable, with no changes from one year to the next.
• Corneal thickness and shape, with topography: that is what tells us how much tissue there is to work with.
• The ocular surface and tear quality, because dry eye changes both the result and the recovery.
• Intraocular pressure and the retina, which get checked even when you came in for something else.

When it is better to wait

Sometimes the answer is "not yet", and that is not a final no: a prescription that is still moving, dry eye that needs treatment first, an ongoing pregnancy or breastfeeding, or a cornea whose shape calls for a different route. In those cases what changes is the timing or the technique, not the possibility.

If you are considering surgery, the first appointment is for assessment, not for deciding: you leave knowing what can be done in your case, what cannot, and why.

Tags Refractive surgeryCorneaWorkup