One common reason for avoiding LASIK surgery? It’s supposedly too new of a procedure for medical science to fully know the procedure’s long-term effects.

What many might not know is at this point, LASIK surgery as an FDA-approved procedure is as old as many of its recipients!

With the first LASIK surgery laser approved in 19981 and the procedure itself being approved one year later, over twenty million Americans have received the vision-enhancing treatment. In 2007, even the United States Air Force approved its use as a corrective vision enhancement for fighter pilots2!

A Tried and True Procedure

It’s true that one reason that a great deal of data on long-term LASIK results isn’t available is that twenty years is a short amount of time compared to other medical procedures. But as the Mayo Clinic notes: “Most people report high satisfaction after LASIK surgery. But long-term results often aren’t available or haven’t been well-studied. Part of the reason for this is that people are overall satisfied after surgery, so they don’t feel a need for repeat examinations and follow-up data is not collected.”3

At the end of the day, you can trust that LASIK surgery has received as much attention from peer-reviewed journals, expert practitioners, and recipients as many other twenty-year-old technological marvels you use every day, from cellphones to passenger jets. And like them, LASIK is constantly being improved to be even more effective.

Creating Life-changing Outcomes

And while the surgery is, of course, still relatively “new,” every month brings new confirmation that this life-changing procedure is successful in the short-term, mid-term, and, increasingly, long-term. It’s a procedure that is performed widely across the United States, with rave reviews from patients. In fact, LASIK has an unprecedented 96 percent patient satisfaction rate – the highest of any elective procedure.

We look at it this way – how wonderful that we’re able to restore vision in a widely-tested way that would be the envy of anyone as recently as the 1980s. We may not have flying cars in the future, but LASIK surgery comes close.

Receive LASIK surgery from ophthalmologists you can trust. Learn more about how your vision can go
from fuzzy to clear.