LASIK

LASIK surgery can be used to treat myopia between 100 to 1,500 degrees and astigmatism of up to 600 degrees. LASIK surgery can also be used to treat people with hyperopia of up to 500 degrees. However, this will depend on the thickness of your cornea.

Yes. After your eyes heal, the vision correction will be permanent.

Some patients experience glare, halos, dry eyes, and at times, a mild fluctuation of vision. This can occur during the first few days or even weeks after a LASIK surgery. However, most of these side effects will subside and resolve with time. Severe side effects such as corneal flap complications and corneal infections are very rare. If you experience any eye redness, pain, or vision loss after LASIK surgery, please inform your doctor immediately.

Yes, you can have LASIK surgery on both eyes on the same day.

Your ophthalmologist will numb your eye with eye drops before LASIK surgery. You might feel light pressure on your eye, but this will not cause you any pain. The feeling of having a foreign object in the operated eye will go away after a short while.

Your vision will be hazy for a few hours after LASIK surgery, but you will still be able to see well enough to move about. However, you should avoid taking public transport home on the day of surgery. You can expect normal vision the day after LASIK surgery.

While some people may experience slight under-correction or over-correction from LASIK surgery, less than one per cent of cases may have under- or over-correction that is significant enough to affect their vision. Enhancement LASIK surgery can be done to correct it.

Enhancement LASIK surgery should only be considered when your eyesight is under- or over-corrected by 100 degrees or more, or if the unaided vision is worse than 6/12. It should be performed at least three months after your LASIK surgery. Your ophthalmologist will evaluate the condition of your eye and assess the risks before deciding whether you are suitable for enhancement LASIK surgery.

After LASIK surgery, your distance vision should generally remain stable. However, there may be slight return of your degree years after LASIK. This is known as regression. When this happens, you may need a pair of glasses when driving at night or when watching a movie.  You may also experience presbyopia (the gradual loss of our eyes' ability to focus on nearby objects) after the age of 40, as LASIK cannot prevent or effectively correct presbyopia. This is a normal phenomenon that comes with ageing and you may need reading glasses then.

LASIK surgery should not be done during pregnancy or when breastfeeding as the hormonal changes experienced during this time may affect the accuracy of the LASIK treatment. This also applies to those who are on hormonal therapy. You should wait at least three months after delivery and breastfeeding before undergoing LASIK surgery.