Laser Surgery and Reading Vision

desolate sun

This question is for people who have had laser surgery.
When you got it done, was your reading vision affected in any way?

I am getting the procedure done next week. My reading vision is perfect - I can read tiny print no problem. I am afraid I will lose this.
I've read somewhere before that short/long sighted people don't use the lens muscle as much as normal sighted people. A normal sighted person's lens changes when they look at something close up and then look at something far away. A short/long sighted person lens stays the same because they cannot see far away/close up. In order words we can't accommodate like a normal sighted person. When getting the surgery done to correct short sightedness, what happens to the lens muscle after it being "unused" for a long time?*

How has your reading vision been after the surgery.

* I may have gotten the technicalities wrong but it is something like this.

carveone

I don't think it makes a huge amount of difference assuming you wear glasses/contacts all the time. After all I'd assume you have to accomodate normally when your vision is corrected. But I'm straying into medical advice which I'd like not to do - ask your surgeon.

Having said that, I'll relay what I did: I was always undercorrected to an extent, mostly because I didn't wear my glasses when I was a teenager when I probably should have, so I didn't get really upset about things being a little fuzzy. When I did LASEK, I was told my full correction (-6.75 in both, more or less) and given a chance to try this with contacts. My glasses prescrip at the time was -6.00.

I found them rather strong and decided I should negotiate an undercorrection with the surgeon. Actually I said would it be a good idea to drop 1/2 off and he said "Great. Good idea given that you're hitting 40 actually. So let's do that.". Uh. Ok!

So I was corrected to -6.25 instead. Still puts me just short of 20/20 - I can read that line with a bit of difficulty and I can read pretty easily. Time will tell how long I've fobbed off reading glasses for, should be into my 50s.

lahinch_lass

having had LasIK done just over a month ago, and having been short-sighted I can say that at the moment I am still having some difficulty on any fine-detail focussing.
i.e. if I was still in my old job that required me to be fiddling with detailed electronic circuits I'd be fairly scuppered. But reading books etc is fine.

My aunt claims it took 2 years for her to fully settle into her new eyesight after getting the op. But she was in her 50's getting the operation... so apparently when you're younger your brain adjusts to the change faster.

As of the 1 month check-up my left eye is 20:20, the right eye is even better.

desolate sun

Hi, thanks for the replies. Got the surgery done a few days ago. Everything went well. My reading vision seems to be ok but it gets tired easily. Should really avoid computers!