Scientists discovered that LASIK might trigger severe side-effects in patients.
Although many people believe that LASIK surgery is just a simple medical procedure with no long-term consequences, recent research suggests the opposite.
According to the statistics, this procedure has become so popular, that millions of U.S. citizens go for it. However, LASIK surgery is more than a simple financial decision. Many experts from the Department of Defense, the National Eye Institute, and the FDA established that every patient undergoing this surgery has a certain risk of developing new symptoms.
To find out about the prevalence of side-effects related to LASIK surgery, a team of researchers conducted an extensive study in 2009. The results were published five years later and revealed that some LASIK patients developed side-effects after surgery affecting their daily activities, including difficulty driving in sunshine or at night.
However, less than one percent of the participants developed these symptoms, so it was impossible for the scientists to come to a conclusion. Fortunately, based on this data, a second study has been recently conducted and provides solid proof that LASIK surgery might trigger some side-effects in patients.
The research implies that patients might experience new symptoms after surgery such as starbursts, halos, glare, and double image. This information was collected from patient satisfaction questionnaires.
More precisely, participants answered questions related to dry-eye symptoms and other aspects related to the LASIK surgery. Although over 95 percent of them confessed that the surgery was a success, some of them said that they experienced new symptoms after the procedure.
The study participants were divided into two groups. The first one involved 262 Navy personnel, out of which 43 percent reported that they experienced new symptoms. In the second group, there were 312 civilians, out of which 46 percent suffered the side-effects of the surgery.
In addition to this, around 28 percent of all participants who had never experienced dry-eye symptoms developed new symptoms 90 days after the surgery.
Since little has been known until now about the side-effects of this procedure, this new study points towards the fact that there might be a higher percentage of patients experiencing new visual symptoms after the surgery and that many of them usually don’t report these symptoms to their doctors.
However, scientists are not sure yet why these patients are reluctant to report the side-effects of the LASIK surgery.
Image Source: Wikipedia
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