Setting yourself up for success in refractive surgery
Dr David Tanzer explains that in order to achieve the best possible post-operative results with laser vision correction, thorough pre-operative examinations are a must. Patients should be carefully screened, comprehensive clinical work-ups must be carried out and detailed informed consent given. Then, and only then, will surgeons achieve the best results.
There may be some misconception that our results and others reported by the military are due to treating only very young, very low myopes. In fact, the range of refractive error in this study was +3.00 D to -9.40 D; military-wide, it is even broader (+6.00 D to -13.00 D). The average age of military LVC patients, 34, is close to the civilian average of 37. The only major difference in a military refractive surgery population compared to the civilian one is gender-the military has a much higher percentage of males-and possibly income distribution. The procedure is free to active duty members of the military, so ability to pay out of pocket is not an issue.
There are several important factors in achieving these results, all of which I believe can be duplicated by any refractive surgeon or centre to achieve the same outstanding results:
In this article, I will discuss the pre-operative factors that set the stage for success.
