How Lasik Works

What to expect before surgery will vary from doctor to doctor and patient to patient.  You should read this information and use the questions page as a starting point for your conversations with your doctor.Before Surgery
If after consulting with your  doctor you decide to go ahead with LASIK surgery, you will need an initial evaluation by your eye doctor to determine if you are a good candidate for LASIK surgery. If you wear contact lenses, it is a good idea to stop wearing them before your baseline evaluation and switch to wearing your glasses full-time. Contact lenses change the shape of your cornea for up to several weeks after you have stopped using them depending on the type of contact lenses you wear. Not leaving your contact lenses out long enough for your cornea to assume its natural shape before surgery can have negative consequences. These consequences include inaccurate measurements and a poor surgical plan, resulting in poor vision after surgery. These measurements, which determine how much corneal tissue to remove, may need to be repeated at least a week after your initial evaluation and before surgery to make sure they have not changed, especially if you wear RGP or hard lenses.  If you wear:

• soft contact lenses, you should stop wearing them for 2 weeks before your initial evaluation.
• toric soft lenses or rigid gas permeable (RGP) lenses, you should stop wearing them for at least 3 weeks before your initial evaluation.
• hard lenses, you should stop wearing them for at least 4 weeks before your initial evaluation.

Some of this information was retrieved from the Food and Drug Administration website at http://www.fda.gov/cdrh/lasik/expect.htm.