Finding a Good LASIK Surgeon
Finding a good surgeon for your LASIK care is not as simple as it sounds. With any professional service including elective surgery, there can be wide variations in critical factors including diagnostic capability, treatment capability, surgeon experience, surgeon judgment, staff training, and procedure price, among others.
If you find it helpful, use the following criteria as your own personal guide:
Experience : Make sure your surgeon has performed at least 1,000 LASIK procedures.
Personal Recommendation : Often, the best recommendations come from friends, family, or acquaintances that have already been to a particular doctor for vision correction care.
Meet and Speak With the Surgeon Personally : In some practices, you don’t get a chance to meet the surgeon before the day of surgery. If the doctor is “too busy doing surgery” to speak with you personally, you are better off to leave and find another surgeon.
Speak to Patients : Ask to speak to some of the patients that have had their procedures done with this particular doctor or center.
Results : The more meticulous and detail-oriented surgeons carefully track and statistically analyze their patient’s outcomes. Ask the surgeon to can show you his (or her) results and complication rate. The surgeon and/or staff should be willing to discuss these issues with you candidly and openly (not defensively). At BEST LASIK, our patients achieve 20/40 or better vision 99.9% of the time, when optimum distance vision is targeted. This level of vision would allow you to pass the DMV vision test without the need for corrective eyewear.
Enhancement Rate : In any practice, some small percentage of patients may benefit from a touch-up (sometimes called enhancement) to achieve ideal vision. One of the advantages of LASIK is that it can be “enhanced” or “touched up” if there is an under- or over-correction from the targeted goal. Seek out a surgeon who has an enhancement rate equal to or better than (below) the national average (about 8%). Our enhancement rate at BEST LASIK is now about 2.2% for patients with nearsightedness and astigmatism, followed for one year after initial treatment.
Licensure : Check to see that the surgeon has a valid medical license, and that the license is in good standing. State medical boards including the California Medical Board typically list this information on their web sites.
Litigation Search : If you are extra careful, you may want to check one of the public information databases on the internet, searching for evidence of malpractice claims against a particular surgeon and/or laser center. I have used and recommended knowx.com for this purpose. This information is not free, but may be worth it. The number of malpractice filings against a doctor does not in itself indicate the severity or culpability in any individual case; but in my opinion, more than a very small number of claims is usually not a good sign.
At BEST LASIK, we take the responsibility for your individual care very seriously. LASIK is an extremely safe procedure when performed by a well-trained and skilled surgeon. I advise seeking an experienced surgeon that will make your LASIK procedure seem like a few effortless minutes resulting in improved vision. We invite you to come to BEST LASIK, learn about vision correction, then relax and enjoy the LASIK experience with the confidence of knowing you are in the hands of a caring, experienced, well trained team using state-of-the-art technology