Vision Correction

[ryanross]

May seem like an ill topic to many hear, but are there ANY types of vision correction that do not cause, or in my case worsen, dry eye? Or even any new breakthrough procedures that have a very small chance of causing it?

[Rebecca Petris]

There are gradations of risk, but there is no surgery to the cornea that carries no risk of dry eye. When you deliberately wound a cornea (be it with a microkeratome or an excimer laser or an incision for a lens implant or what have you), you create risk for dry eye.

Most new procedures claim to reduce the risk. I find the science behind the claims unimpressive. It's not that I doubt the possibility they are right, but that they so often fail to scientifically quantify the symptoms and signs of dry eye in credible ways.

A point to keep in mind is that reducing risk of dry eye doesn't necessarily translate into less dry eye per instance if you get what I mean. For example we've always been told that PRK has much less risk of severe dry eye. But we've had some real zingers here in the community, people whose PRK-induced dry eye was every bit as bad as the worst LASIK-induced cases.

We don't get very many elective lens implant (P-IOL, etc) patients here so it's hard to judge of that (other than by the folks who get dry eye after cataract surgery).