Are Multiple Corrective Eye Surgeries An Option?

Some of the most com­mon eye surg­eries most peo­ple end up hav­ing in their life­time is LASIK and cataract surgery. Although, most peo­ple want to know if they can have both of these surg­eries, or just one. The sim­ple answer is yes, you can have surg­eries for both LASIK and cataracts. How­ev­er, there are a few things you should know before you go down either one of these routes.

CATARACT SURGERY AFTER LASIK

If you’ve had LASIK surgery to help cor­rect your vision, you might now be notic­ing how your eye­sight could be going in the oppo­site direc­tion you were hop­ing for. This doesn’t mean your LASIK surgery wasn’t a suc­cess, it could mean that you’re devel­op­ing cataracts. Many eye pro­ce­dures have the risk of this devel­op­ment, as well as the sim­ple fact you might be approach­ing the age where cataracts are com­mon for devel­op­ment.

If you’re notic­ing this, or have been diag­nosed with cataracts, you might be con­sid­er­ing cor­rec­tive cataract surgery. When you meet with your doc­tor who will poten­tial­ly per­form your surgery, be sure that you bring copies of your med­ical records regard­ing you pre­vi­ous LASIK surgery. They need to be aware of all that was pre­vi­ous­ly done, this way they can iden­ti­fy what cor­rec­tive pro­ce­dure is the right choice for you at this time.

Again, with any pro­ce­dure, you need to make sure your sur­geon goes over all the poten­tial risks of the surgery with you, this way you’re aware of pos­si­ble out­comes.

LASIK AFTER CATARACT SURGERY

Many peo­ple, after hav­ing cataract surgery, might look at LASIK as an option to help bring their vision to an even bet­ter lev­el. This is some­thing that is not as uncom­mon as some might think it is. LASIK surgery can be per­formed after pre­vi­ous­ly hav­ing cataract surgery, but you should wait any­where from 3–6 months before you head down this new path.

Again, you will want to sup­ply your sur­geon with all med­ical records that per­tain to the pre­vi­ous pro­ce­dure. This will help pre­vent any poten­tial com­pli­ca­tions from occur­ring. Your sur­geon should inform you if there was any exten­sive vision loss as a result of the cataracts them­selves, they most like­ly can’t reverse that with the use of LASIK. But the undam­aged areas will be vast­ly improved.

If you’re want­i­ng to find out if you’re a can­di­date for either of these pro­ce­dures, con­tact your opthamol­o­gist, and they will be able to refer you to the prop­er facil­i­ties for either pro­ce­dure.