It might be tempting to have your LASIK eye surgery on the same day as your LASIK consultation, especially if your LASIK surgeon is pressuring you or offering unbeatable financial incentives. But be careful! It is medically inappropriate and unsafe for you to have a same-day LASIK surgery procedure as your consultation.
Eye Dilation & Your LASIK Eye Surgery Procedure
Although having your eyes dilated can be a bit of an annoyance, it is mission-critical and the standard of care when it comes to properly evaluating you for any laser vision correction surgery. Your eyes should definitely be dilated during your LASIK consultation, which should always happen on a different day from your LASIK eye surgery procedure.
There are three primary reasons why having your eyes dilated on a different day from your LASIK surgery procedure is so important:
- Confirm Stability – Your vision has to be stable before you have a LASIK eye surgery procedure, or your LASIK surgery will “not last.” Did you know that when you are not dilated and your eye doctor tests for vision stability and asks you, “What is better - 1 or 2, 2 or 3?”, that your eyes and brain can actually compensate, and you are unintentionally giving your doctor inaccurate information? But when your eyes are dilated, it is virtually impossible to compensate, so the measurement of your prescription is more accurate. This test for vision stability is particularly important for patients in their 20’s, and it is why a same-day LASIK eye surgery could produce a less than optimal result if your eyes have not been dilated.
- Evaluate general eye health, especially the retina – Determining if you are a good LASIK eye surgery procedure candidate is not just about your vision. There are some eye conditions that can actually get worse after LASIK if they are not identified. By dilating your eyes during your comprehensive LASIK consultation, our LASIK surgeons, Dr. Nunnery and Dr. Mozayeni, are evaluating the health of the back of your eye, specifically your retina. He is looking for any slight tears in the retina that often times do not give you any symptoms. If you have LASIK and have any retina problems, you could have significant complications. This is why dilating your eyes during a LASIK consultation on a separate day from your LASIK eye surgery procedure is mission-critical.
- Determining cataract progression - If you were to have same-day LASIK eye surgery, a doctor would not be properly dilating the eyes to assess cataract progression. If you have cataracts that have progressed to a certain point, LASIK results could be very short-lived.
Though it may not be as convenient, it’s better to put up with the slight annoyance of dilated eyes to ensure that you are in fact an ideal LASIK surgery candidate who will have a long-lasting result, rather than to rush and have LASIK surgery on the same day as your un-dilated consultation and risk a less-than-ideal result.
