LASIK delivers outstanding results for the right candidates, but not everyone qualifies. Most candidates are at least 18 for milder nearsightedness, or at least 21 for higher prescriptions, significant astigmatism, or farsightedness, with a prescription that has been stable for at least a year. You should be in generally good health, free of active eye disease, and your corneas need to be healthy and thick enough to be safely reshaped. Because iDesign measures so much more of the eye than a refraction can, more people qualify than with earlier LASIK technology, including patients with higher astigmatism and patients over 40 who want better reading vision through monovision.
Some conditions rule LASIK out or point toward an alternative. Keratoconus, corneas that are too thin, very high prescriptions, and untreated dry eye are the ones we see most often. Pregnancy and nursing, severe collagen vascular, autoimmune, or immunodeficiency disease, and medications such as isotretinoin (Accutane) or amiodarone (Cordarone) also affect healing and eligibility. If LASIK is not the right fit, Dr. Boutros may recommend CustomVue PRK, a surface treatment on the same Advanced CustomVue platform, or the EVO Visian ICL, an implantable collamer lens for patients outside the laser treatment range.
It is also worth knowing what LASIK does not do. It does not prevent presbyopia, the natural age-related loss of close-up focus, so patients over 40 may still need reading glasses, and a nearsighted patient who has been using that nearsightedness to read may need readers afterward. If you are very physically active or have occupational vision requirements, such as pilots do, raise those needs at your consultation so the plan can account for them. A comprehensive pre-operative exam with Dr. Boutros is the only way to know for certain.
