Dr. Kameen's Blog

Ultimately, the patient experience is what really matters to me, and to other potential patients. I was fortunate to have a recent patient of mine, Laura Straub, approach me about documenting her experience for her own personal use. I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to let the patient do the talking. Her first blog post and comment that she received urged me to follow up with my own post about the fears and misconceptions of Lasik surgery. 

I tell my staff all the time that "we do this everyday, but our patients don't", and we apply that every day. So each day we approach every patient knowing that what they are experiencing is a first experience for them, and first experiences in our lives undoubtedly come with some anxiety, no matter how informed we are. I find Laura's initial questions representative of the average concerns a patient has as they consider Lasik surgery. I think Arden's follow up questions to Laura confirm my impression. After almost two decades of Laser Vision Correction (Lasik and PRK) experience, and over 80,000 procedures, I still think fear is the biggest barrier in a prospective patients decision process. I completely understand this, but sometimes find it ironic. The technology has improved so much, and so many of the early variables have been eliminated. I would suspect that someday the patients anxiety would decrease. The reason it doesn't, however, is that the eyes are connected to the brain and, thus, the emotions. The visual sense is likely our most emotional sense. So tinkering with this sense produces a flood of thoughts as the day of Lasik surgery approaches...."will I see my children tomorrow", "will I be able to perform my job after this", "am I crazy to do this?" I have heard all of these questions and hundreds more. My general response is based on the knowledge that most of my potential Lasik patients have gone through years, usually decades, of contact lens wear. Their eyes have been through countless days of irritation, infection, discomfort, blurred vision, etc, all of which are seen in exponentially higher numbers in contact lens wearers than Lasik patients. For instance, I have never had an infection in a post Lasik or PRK patient. Compare that to the ten cases of contact lens related infection that I have seen this July alone. Any comparison of Lasik to contact lens wear is telling. The potentially serious complication rate of Lasik surgery pales in comparison to long term contact lens wear. I have all of my Lasik patients reflect on this, and virtually everyone relaxes in front of my eyes.

I am fortunate to belong to an international surgeons group (about 20 surgeons) that, together, has performed over  2 million of the approximately 15 million Laser Vision Correction procedures that have been performed worldwide over the past 20 years. We are in touch, via an email forum, several times a day. This is the most talented group of surgeons in the world, who have a combined experience that is unparalleled. As a perspective Lasik patient of mine (or theirs for that matter) feels the normal butterflies that precede the surgical experience, they can take comfort that I am plugged in to the nucleus of the world of Laser Vision Correction and that through this group I have access to up to the minute information regarding this wonderful, life changing procedure. This surgeon group has an ongoing dialogue of patient outcomes and experiences that leads the field and is inspiring the procedures we will do in the future to tackle even more difficult visual conditions than we see today.

I look forward to following Laura's experience along with the rest of you. Laura's vision without correction is 20/4000, which is probably one of the worst I've seen.  So, let's see where her vision is in 24 hours.....I can't wait!