Following your procedure, it is essential that you follow recovery instructions to manage post-surgery side effects. Temporary side effects of LASIK and PRK can include dry eyes and halos. Dr. Andrew E. Holzman makes every effort to minimize your laser eye surgery risks by thoroughly evaluating your candidacy and ensuring that you are provided with the highest level of care.
About 80% of my procedures are done with LASIK, and about 20% are done with PRK. Both procedures have excellent outcomes, and both procedures have similar stability. So they’ve been studied at 10 years, and they have equal stability. So we have fantastic results with both procedures. In terms of risk, they’re also very similar. The main risks that are involved are dry eyes postoperatively and temporary glare and haloing. The dry eye phenomenon, typically, lasts three to four months. So it’s important that patients follow instructions and use the eye drops that we prescribe in advance, and then they get through this period. There is some other environmental changes that we like patients to make such as, maybe, putting a humidifier in their bedroom, or not letting fans or vents blow in their eyes, and things like that. Basically, the dry eye is slightly worsened for three or four months and then comes back to normal. The glare and haloing issues, lasting probably about two or three weeks, and is typically very temporary, and fades dramatically over the first month. It is very rare that either of those, or any complication for that matter, is permanent. The risks of any serious complications, in either PRK or LASIK, are well less than one percentage point. I’ve worked diligently over the years to develop protocols to reduce risk. And while it is surgery, and there is never a way to say 100% safe, it sure comes darn close. We only operate on patients that are excellent candidates, and we follow diligent pre-op, intraoperative, and postoperative protocols. Our patients are in good hands.
