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DALLAS, TX -- (Marketwire) -- 10/28/11 -- LASIK was once off-limits to people with thin corneas, dry eye and prescriptions in higher ranges. But thanks to advances in technology and technique, many of those once ineligible for LASIK may now benefit from the popular vision correction procedure....
LAsik,LAsik, RAH RAH RAH!
Classic ASCRS propaganda on a Monday morning, before I've even had my first cup of coffee. Oops (slap) I forgot, back to green tea.
Fifteen plus years into LASIK, when we've had all this time to study what is well known to be its #1 long-term complication (dry eye), who gets it worst and why... you'd think we would acquire this knowledge and use it to narrow the candidate pool so as to exclude those at highest risk.
Nope. Been there, done that - after all, we kinda-sorta agreed years ago not to push symptomatic people with Sjogrens or RA into LASIK, and to offer PRK instead to a few other people that we high risk, right? That oughta shut up the naysayers.
And we know people everywhere with dry eye are pining to get LASIK, and we want to serve the public well, right? So this is no time to be cautious! It's time to EXPAND the candidate pool. Those fancy new dry eye tests can all be used as part of a bold new marketing plan to show how much you care by identifying people with pre-existing dry eye , explaining how great your technology is at not inducing dry eye, and plying them with steroids and Restasis for awhile before surgery.
Viola. Dry eye? No problem. You Too can benefit from the delights of LASIK! After all, my fancy schmancy femtosecond laser is the latest and greatest and Studies Have Shown* that those don't create as much dry eye as microkeratomes.
Come on guys. You are so blooming predictable. LASIK revenues plummet in an economy like this, and everyone gets more aggressive with the marketing - at what cost?
*well okay maybe not this one.