Why LASEK Vision Sharpens More Slowly Than LASIK and What the Final Result Looks Like

The group chat lights up on day two. A friend who had LASIK last spring is texting about how she drove herself to her follow-up the next morning. You, meanwhile, are sitting in a dim living room with the curtains drawn, a bandage contact lens in each eye, squinting at a phone screen that looks as if someone smeared petroleum jelly across it. You had LASEK yesterday. Nobody warned you it would feel like this.

Actually, somebody probably did. It is just hard to hear the phrase “slower recovery” in a consultation and translate it into what a Tuesday afternoon will feel like. The lasek results timeline is measured in weeks and months rather than hours, and that gap between expectation and experience is where most of the anxiety lives.

Here is what is going on under that blurry surface, why the slowness is built into the procedure rather than a sign of trouble, and what the finished picture usually looks like once the cornea has done its work.

The lasek results timeline at a glance

LASEK stands for laser-assisted subepithelial keratectomy: a form of laser vision correction in which the surgeon loosens the cornea’s outermost cell layer, folds it aside, reshapes the tissue beneath with an excimer laser, and lays the layer back down. The cornea is the clear dome at the front of the eye that does most of the eye’s focusing.

Because the surface layer is disturbed rather than left intact, the eye cannot see sharply until that layer has healed and smoothed itself. The NHS describes LASEK and its close relative PRK as having a longer recovery than LASIK, with several days of discomfort and a slower return of clear vision. Mayo Clinic notes that after any laser refractive procedure, vision may be hazy at first and typically continues to improve over a period of weeks to months, with stabilization in some people taking longer.

A useful way to hold the timeline in your head:

• Days one to four: the surface is regrowing; vision is poor, light sensitivity is common, and a protective bandage lens is usually in place.
• Days five to fourteen: the lens comes out, the surface has closed, and vision starts to feel usable but fluctuates from hour to hour.
• Weeks two to twelve: clarity improves in steps rather than a straight line, and the prescription measured in clinic keeps shifting toward its endpoint.
• Months three to six: for most people, the result settles and any residual fine-tuning discussion happens.

Those ranges come from the general recovery descriptions published by the NHS and Mayo Clinic, and your own timeline could sit at either end. The rest of this article explains why each phase takes as long as it does, and what a realistic finish line looks like.

What actually happens during LASEK surgery

The procedure itself is short, usually well under half an hour for both eyes, and it happens with you awake, lying back, and looking at a fixation light. Numbing drops take away sensation from the cornea. A small ring rests on the eye to hold a diluted alcohol solution against the surface for a brief period. Alcohol loosens the bond between the epithelium, the cornea’s thin skin-like top layer, and the tissue beneath it.

The surgeon then gently rolls that loosened sheet of epithelium to one side, the way you might peel back a corner of cling film. What is exposed is the stroma, the thick structural middle layer of the cornea that gives it its curve. An excimer laser, which vaporizes microscopic amounts of tissue without heat damage to surrounding cells, reshapes the stroma according to your measured prescription: flattening the center for nearsightedness, steepening it for farsightedness, or smoothing an uneven curve for astigmatism.

Finally the epithelial sheet is unrolled back over the treated area, and a soft bandage contact lens is placed on top to hold it steady and reduce pain while new cells knit underneath. In some cases the surgeon applies a brief dose of mitomycin C, an antimetabolite medicine that slows the growth of scar-forming cells and is used to lower the risk of surface haze after higher corrections. Whether it is used, and how, is a decision for the operating surgeon.

Compare that with LASIK, in which a femtosecond laser or mechanical blade cuts a hinged flap through the epithelium and into the upper stroma, the flap is lifted, the laser reshapes the bed, and the flap is smoothed back into position. The flap seals itself within hours, which is why LASIK patients so often report near-clear vision by the next morning, as Mayo Clinic describes.

Why LASEK vision sharpens more slowly than LASIK

Three things have to happen before a LASEK eye can see sharply, and none of them is instant.

First, the epithelium must re-establish itself. The alcohol-loosened sheet that was laid back down is a temporary scaffold; much of it does not survive as living tissue. Fresh cells migrate in from the edges and from the limbus, the ring where the cornea meets the white of the eye, and close the defect over roughly four to seven days according to Cleveland Clinic’s description of surface laser procedures. Until that closure happens, the surface is rough, and a rough surface scatters light the way frosted glass does.

Second, the new epithelium has to remodel into an optically smooth layer of even thickness. Early on it is lumpy in places, thin in others. Every uneven patch bends light slightly differently, which is why vision in weeks two to four can be good in the morning and frustrating by evening. Tear film quality feeds into this too; a dry surface amplifies every irregularity.

Third, the stroma responds to the laser with a healing reaction of its own. Cells called keratocytes activate near the treated surface and can lay down disorganized collagen that shows up as faint haze. In most people this is mild and fades over months, and the anti-inflammatory drops prescribed after surgery are aimed largely at keeping it in check.

LASIK sidesteps the first two steps almost entirely. The flap carries an intact epithelium with it, and the cut edge seals within a day. Its stroma is reshaped at a deeper level, under a protective lid of tissue, so surface haze is less of an issue. A 2017 Cochrane review comparing the two procedures found low-certainty evidence that LASIK gives faster visual recovery in the early period, which matches this biology exactly.

LASEK vs LASIK recovery: side by side

Seeing the two pathways next to each other makes the trade-off clearer than any paragraph can. The ranges below are drawn from recovery descriptions published by the NHS, Mayo Clinic and Cleveland Clinic and from the Cochrane comparison; individual experiences vary, and your surgeon’s guidance overrides any general table.

Aspect	LASEK	LASIK
How the surface is handled	Epithelium loosened with dilute alcohol, folded aside, replaced	Hinged flap cut through epithelium and upper stroma, lifted, replaced
Depth of the cut into the cornea	Surface only; stroma left structurally intact	Flap extends into upper stroma
Discomfort in the first days	Moderate; gritty, watery, light-sensitive for several days	Mild; often described as scratchy for hours to a day
Bandage contact lens	Usually worn until the surface closes, about four to seven days	Not usually needed
Functional vision for daily tasks	Commonly one to two weeks	Commonly one to two days
Vision considered stable	Roughly one to three months, occasionally up to six	Roughly a few weeks to three months
Outcome at twelve months	No clear difference in uncorrected vision found in the Cochrane review
Flap-related complications	Not applicable	Possible, though uncommon
Surface haze	Possible, more so with larger corrections	Uncommon

Read the table from the bottom up rather than the top down. The rows about complications and the twelve-month result are the ones that tend to drive a surgeon’s recommendation. The rows about early discomfort and the first two weeks are the ones that dominate a patient’s memory of the experience. Both perspectives are legitimate; neither should be the only one in the room.

What the table cannot show is the shape of the recovery curve. LASIK vision tends to arrive quickly and then plateau. LASEK vision climbs in a jagged line, with setbacks that feel alarming in the moment and turn out to mean nothing by the following week.

LASEK recovery time in the first week: what the days usually look like

Day one, the day of surgery, is usually the most manageable, oddly enough. The numbing drops are still working when you leave, and vision through the bandage lens is often better than expected. By evening the numbing has worn off and the eyes begin to feel gritty, watery and sensitive to light. Many people find that a dark room, closed eyes and sleep are the only things that genuinely help.

Days two and three are commonly the low point. The epithelial defect is at its largest, and the exposed nerve endings in the cornea register everything: light, air movement, blinking. The NHS notes that pain after surface laser procedures can last for several days, and that vision will be blurred during this period. Prescribed lubricating drops, the anti-inflammatory and antibiotic drops your team has chosen, cold compresses over closed lids, and staying out of bright light are the usual supports. Whether any pain relief by mouth is appropriate is a question for your prescribing clinician.

Around day four or five the corner turns. New cells have closed the surface, the sharp discomfort eases, and the bandage lens is removed at a follow-up visit, typically somewhere between day four and day seven per Cleveland Clinic’s description. Vision immediately after lens removal can briefly seem worse, because the newly healed surface is still uneven and the lens was masking that.

By the end of week one most people can read a phone at arm’s length and move around unaided, though small print and night driving are usually still out of reach. It is worth asking your team in advance about driving, screen use and return-to-work expectations rather than guessing; they will base the answer on what they see at your follow-up.

LASEK healing stages from week two to month six

Once the surface has closed, the pain question is largely answered and the clarity question takes over. This is the long middle of the lasek results timeline, and it is the part most people are least prepared for.

Weeks two to four are the fluctuation phase. The new epithelium is thickening and evening itself out, and the tear film has to learn to spread over a surface with a different shape than the one it knew. Vision is often sharpest in the morning after a night of closed, lubricated eyes and worse by late afternoon after hours of screen time. One eye frequently runs ahead of the other. Halos and starbursts around lights at night are common in this window, as Mayo Clinic notes for laser refractive surgery generally, and tend to fade as the surface smooths.

Weeks four to twelve bring steadier gains. Clinic measurements of your refraction, the lens power that would correct any remaining error, tend to drift toward zero in this period, and a small early overcorrection or undercorrection often resolves on its own. The anti-inflammatory drops are commonly tapered through this phase on a schedule set by your surgeon; the taper matters because stopping abruptly or continuing too long each carry their own risks, so follow the plan you were given and raise any concerns rather than adjusting it yourself.

Months three to six are when the word “stable” becomes reasonable. The NHS advises that it can take several months for vision to settle fully after surface procedures. Faint stromal haze, if present, is usually at its most visible around the one- to three-month mark on a slit-lamp examination and then thins out. Only when two consecutive measurements weeks apart agree do most surgeons consider the result final and discuss whether any fine-tuning is worth considering.

How long after LASEK can I see clearly, and what does the final result look like?

“Clearly” means different things to different people, so it helps to separate three questions: when can you function, when does your vision stop changing, and what level of sharpness does it reach.

Functional clarity, the point at which you stop reaching for glasses to get through an ordinary day, tends to arrive somewhere in the first two weeks for most LASEK patients, based on the recovery ranges the NHS and Cleveland Clinic publish. Stability, meaning the prescription has stopped drifting, is usually reached between one and three months, with some eyes taking closer to six.

Sharpness is the harder question because it is the one most tangled up with marketing. The Cochrane review by Kuryan and colleagues compared LASEK and LASIK for nearsightedness and found no clear evidence of a difference between the two in uncorrected visual acuity at twelve months. In plain terms, once healing is complete, the destination looks much the same; what differs is the road.

What that destination realistically involves:

• Most people who are good candidates reach vision that lets them drive and work without correction, though “20/20 or better in every eye” is not something any surgeon can promise.
• A small residual prescription is possible, and whether it warrants an enhancement is a shared decision made only after stability.
• Night-time halos and glare usually diminish but may not vanish completely, particularly for larger corrections or larger pupils.
• Dry eye symptoms often ease over months as corneal nerves regrow, but some people need long-term lubrication.
• Reading vision is not restored by LASEK in people over roughly forty, because presbyopia, the age-related stiffening of the eye’s internal lens, is a separate process.

A good outcome, in other words, is a life with far less dependence on lenses, not a life with no optical imperfections at all. Mayo Clinic’s patient guidance is careful to frame it exactly that way.

Who LASEK is usually for, and who is usually asked to wait

Surgeons rarely offer LASEK as a lifestyle preference. More often it is chosen because something about the eye makes a flap unwise.

The most common reason is corneal thickness. LASIK removes tissue for the flap as well as for the correction, so an eye with a thinner-than-average cornea may not have enough spare material to leave a safe structural bed beneath. Surface procedures such as LASEK and PRK preserve that depth. Cleveland Clinic lists thin corneas among the main reasons a surface procedure is recommended over LASIK.

Occupation and activity matter too. People whose work or sport carries a real risk of a direct blow to the eye, such as certain military roles, martial arts or contact sports, are often steered toward a flapless approach because a flap, even years later, can in rare cases be displaced by trauma. Significant dry eye is another consideration; creating a flap cuts more corneal nerves than surface treatment does, and some surgeons prefer LASEK when the tear film is already borderline.

Who tends to be asked to wait or to consider other options, according to the NHS and Mayo Clinic screening guidance:

• People whose glasses prescription has changed meaningfully within the past year, since laser correction locks in a target that may drift.
• Anyone under about eighteen, whose eyes are still developing.
• People who are pregnant or breastfeeding, because hormonal changes can temporarily alter the cornea and prescription.
• Those with keratoconus or other conditions that weaken corneal structure, for whom removing tissue can accelerate the problem.
• People with uncontrolled autoimmune disease, poorly controlled diabetes or active eye infection, all of which can impair healing.
• Anyone with very high prescriptions that exceed what can be safely removed, for whom lens-based surgery may be discussed instead.

Candidacy is decided by a full examination including corneal mapping, not by a questionnaire, and the final call sits with the surgeon who will operate.

Is LASEK better than LASIK? What the evidence actually shows

The honest answer is that “better” depends on which outcome you rank first, and the research does not hand either procedure a clear win.

Start with the Cochrane review by Kuryan and colleagues, which pooled randomized trials comparing LASEK with LASIK for nearsightedness. It found low-certainty evidence that LASIK produced better uncorrected vision in the early weeks, consistent with the faster recovery everyone describes. By twelve months, the reviewers found no clear evidence that one procedure gave sharper uncorrected vision than the other, and no clear difference in how many eyes ended up within a small margin of the intended correction. The authors were candid that the underlying trials were few and of modest quality, so “no clear difference” is a statement about the limits of the data as much as about the procedures.

A companion Cochrane review by Li and colleagues compared LASEK with PRK, its older cousin in which the epithelium is simply removed rather than folded aside. It too found no convincing evidence of a difference in final vision, and mixed evidence on whether LASEK healed faster or hurt less.

What this means in practice:

• If rapid return to sharp vision is your top priority and your cornea is suitable, LASIK’s early advantage is real and documented.
• If preserving corneal structure or avoiding flap-related risks matters more, LASEK’s slower start buys you those things without an evidence-based penalty in final clarity.
• Claims that either procedure is “safer” or “more accurate” across the board go beyond what the trials support.

Any article that tells you surgeons universally prefer one over the other is simplifying. The right procedure is the one that fits your corneal measurements, your eye’s tear film, your daily activities and your tolerance for a slower recovery, and that is a conversation to have with the team examining you.

Going back to work, screens, sport and driving after LASEK

The question “Can I go back to work two days after surgery?” has a different answer for LASEK than for LASIK, and it also depends heavily on what your work involves.

Two days after LASEK, most people are still in the peak discomfort window with a bandage lens in place, light sensitivity and vision too blurry for detailed tasks. Screen-heavy jobs are hard at this stage, both because of blur and because concentrating on a screen suppresses blinking and dries the healing surface. The NHS suggests that people having surface laser procedures should expect to need more time off than those having LASIK, with a week being a common planning horizon rather than a day or two. If your role is physically demanding, dusty, or involves chemical splash or eye-contact risk, your surgeon may advise waiting longer or wearing protective eyewear on return.

Driving is a legal as well as a medical question. You should not drive until your surgeon confirms your vision meets the required standard, which after LASEK is often not until the second week or later. Do not rely on how your vision feels; have it checked.

Activity guidance commonly given after laser eye surgery, based on Mayo Clinic and NHS patient advice, tends to run along these lines, though your own instructions take precedence:

• Avoid rubbing the eyes for several weeks, and wear the protective shields provided when sleeping for as long as your team advises.
• Keep soap, shampoo, tap water and cosmetics away from the eyes in the first week or two.
• Hold off on swimming, hot tubs and saunas for a period your surgeon specifies, because of infection risk to a healing surface.
• Gentle exercise is usually fine within days; contact sports and anything with ball or elbow risk wait longer.
• Sunglasses outdoors help with light sensitivity and may reduce the risk of haze in the early months.

When in doubt, ask before you do it. A quick phone call is cheaper in every sense than a set-back to the surface you have just spent a week regrowing.

What people often get wrong about LASEK recovery

“If my vision is still blurry at two weeks, something went wrong.” Almost always untrue. Fluctuating, incomplete clarity in weeks two to four is the expected texture of LASEK healing, not a complication. The surface is still remodeling. What would concern a surgeon is worsening vision, increasing pain or new redness, not slow steady improvement.

“LASEK is the old-fashioned option.” LASEK and PRK predate LASIK in the sense that surface treatment came first, but the lasers, tracking systems and treatment profiles used today are the same modern platforms used for LASIK. What differs is how the surface is handled, not the technology doing the reshaping.

“Slower recovery means a worse result.” The Cochrane comparison found no clear difference in uncorrected vision at twelve months. Speed of arrival and quality of destination are separate things.

“One eye is healing faster, so the other one has a problem.” Uneven healing between eyes is common in the first month. The two eyes were treated for slightly different prescriptions, have slightly different tear films and slightly different nerve sensitivity. They usually converge.

“I can stop the drops once I feel fine.” The anti-inflammatory drops after LASEK are doing quiet work against haze long after the eye feels comfortable. Tapering them is a decision that belongs to your prescribing clinician, and stopping early on your own is one of the more common ways a good recovery is undermined.

“LASEK fixes reading vision too.” It corrects distance focus. Presbyopia, the age-related loss of near focus that begins in the forties, is a separate process in a different part of the eye, and it will arrive on schedule whether or not your cornea has been reshaped.

“Halos at night mean the surgery failed.” Night glare and halos are common in the early months after any laser refractive procedure and usually diminish as the surface smooths. Persistent, disabling halos at six months are worth discussing, but early ones are part of the process.

What happens 20 years after laser eye surgery?

People ask this about LASIK more than LASEK, but the answer is largely the same for both, because what changes over decades is the eye around the treatment rather than the treatment itself.

The corneal reshaping is permanent. Tissue removed by the excimer laser does not grow back, and the stroma does not re-steepen on its own. What does change is everything else that affects how you see:

• Presbyopia arrives in the forties and progresses through the fifties, so most people who had laser surgery in their twenties or thirties end up needing reading glasses regardless. This is not regression; it is the lens inside the eye stiffening, as MedlinePlus describes.
• Natural prescription drift can continue in some eyes, particularly those that were very nearsighted to begin with. A small shift over decades is possible and can sometimes be addressed with glasses, contact lenses or, if the cornea allows, further laser treatment.
• Cataract, the clouding of the eye’s internal lens, becomes increasingly common from the sixties onward. Cataract surgery is entirely possible after LASEK or LASIK, though the surgeon uses adjusted formulas to calculate the replacement lens, so keeping a record of your pre-surgery prescription and corneal measurements is genuinely useful.
• Dry eye tends to be more prevalent with age in everyone, and a history of laser surgery may make some people more susceptible; lubrication and lid care remain the mainstays.

One point specific to LASEK: because no flap was created, there is no flap interface that could in theory be disturbed by injury decades later. This is one of the reasons surface procedures are favored for people in high-impact occupations, as discussed earlier. Whether that theoretical advantage translates into measurable long-term benefit has not been proven in trials, and it should be weighed as a consideration rather than a guarantee.

Regular eye examinations remain important after laser correction, not because the treatment is fragile but because the rest of the eye keeps aging on its own schedule.

Questions to ask your care team before and after LASEK

A consultation goes better when you arrive with specific questions rather than a general hope for reassurance. The list below is a starting point; your own circumstances will add to it.

Before surgery:

• Why are you recommending LASEK for my eyes rather than LASIK or another option, and what measurement drove that recommendation?
• How thick is my cornea, and how much tissue will the planned correction remove?
• What is my expected recovery timeline for functional vision, for driving, and for stability, given my particular prescription?
• Will you use mitomycin C or other haze-reducing steps, and why or why not in my case?
• What is your plan if I have a residual prescription once vision is stable?
• How will my dry eye, if I have any, be assessed and managed around surgery?

After surgery:

• What should my vision be like at each follow-up, and what would make you concerned?
• Exactly how and when will the anti-inflammatory drops be tapered, and what should I do if I miss a dose or run out?
• When is it appropriate for me to drive, return to my specific job, exercise and swim?
• How do I reach someone out of hours if I develop sudden pain, redness or a drop in vision?
• At what point will you consider the result final, and what will that assessment involve?

Write the answers down. In the fog of week one, memory is unreliable, and a written plan you can check against is calming in a way that a vague recollection is not. Every one of these questions has an answer that belongs to your surgeon and their team, not to a general article, and that is exactly the point of asking them.

When to call your doctor after LASEK

Most of what you will feel in the first weeks after LASEK is expected: grittiness, watering, light sensitivity, blur, fluctuation and mild aching. The signs below are different. They suggest something that needs to be examined promptly rather than watched, and you should contact your surgical team the same day, or seek emergency eye care if you cannot reach them.

• Pain that is getting worse rather than better after day three, or pain that returns sharply after it had settled. Expected discomfort peaks early and then eases; a reversal can signal infection, a displaced bandage lens or a surface that has broken down.
• A sudden drop in vision in one or both eyes, particularly if it follows a period of improvement. Slow progress is normal; going backwards is not.
• Increasing redness, especially with a thick or colored discharge rather than the clear watering that is common early on.
• A white or grey spot on the cornea that you or someone else can see when looking at your eye. This can represent infection and is treated as urgent.
• Severe light sensitivity that intensifies after the first few days instead of fading.
• The bandage lens falling out or feeling displaced before your team intended to remove it. Do not try to reinsert it; call and ask what to do.
• A feeling that something has struck or scratched the eye, even if it seems minor, during the early healing window.
• New floaters, flashes of light, or a shadow or curtain across part of your vision. These are not typical LASEK effects and can indicate a retinal problem that needs same-day assessment regardless of recent surgery, as Mayo Clinic and MedlinePlus advise.

Mayo Clinic and the NHS both note that infection and significant complications after laser refractive surgery are uncommon, but the window for treating them well is short. If you are unsure whether a symptom counts, err toward calling. Surgical teams would much rather see a healing eye that turns out to be fine than hear about a problem a week late.

Frequently asked questions

How long does LASEK recovery time take compared with LASIK?

LASEK recovery is measured in weeks where LASIK is measured in days. After LASEK the surface closes over roughly four to seven days, functional vision commonly returns within one to two weeks, and stability is usually reached between one and three months. LASIK patients often see usably well within a day or two. Both ranges are typical rather than guaranteed and vary with the size of the correction and individual healing.

How long after LASEK can I see clearly enough to drive?

Often not until the second week or later, and only after your surgeon confirms your vision meets the legal driving standard. Vision in the first days is blurred by the healing surface and the bandage lens, and even after the lens is removed, clarity fluctuates. Feeling that you can see well enough is not the same as measuring it, so wait for a formal check before driving.

Is LASEK better than LASIK?

Neither is better across the board. A Cochrane review found low-certainty evidence that LASIK gives faster early recovery, with no clear difference in uncorrected vision between the two at twelve months. LASEK is usually recommended when a thin cornea, a high-impact occupation or borderline dry eye makes a flap less attractive. The right choice depends on your measurements and priorities, as assessed by your surgeon.

What are the LASEK healing stages I should expect?

Days one to four involve regrowth of the surface with discomfort, light sensitivity and blur. Days five to fourteen bring lens removal and usable but fluctuating vision. Weeks two to twelve see stepwise improvement with morning-to-evening variation and possible night halos. Months three to six are when most eyes stabilize and any faint haze thins. These stages come from general recovery descriptions and can shift earlier or later for you.

Can I go back to work two days after LASEK?

For most people, two days is too soon after LASEK, unlike after LASIK. At that point the surface is still healing, a bandage lens is usually in place, and vision is too blurry for detailed tasks. The NHS suggests planning for around a week away from work after surface laser procedures, longer for dusty, physical or eye-risk roles. Your surgeon will tailor this to your job.

How long does it take to get 20/20 vision after LASEK?

There is no fixed date, and 20/20 is not guaranteed for every eye. Many people reach their best clarity between one and three months as the surface smooths and the prescription stops drifting, though some take up to six. The final level of sharpness depends on your starting prescription, corneal healing and tear film. Your surgeon will judge the result once two measurements weeks apart agree.

Why is my vision worse after the bandage contact lens came out?

A brief dip after lens removal is common. The bandage lens was smoothing over a newly healed surface that is still uneven in thickness, and once it is gone, that unevenness scatters light until the epithelium remodels over the following weeks. If the drop is dramatic, painful or accompanied by redness or discharge, contact your team the same day rather than waiting for it to settle.

Does LASEK cause haze, and does it go away?

Faint corneal haze can develop after LASEK, more often with larger corrections, because stromal cells respond to the laser by laying down slightly disorganized collagen. In most cases it is mild, most visible around one to three months on examination, and fades over time. Anti-inflammatory drops and, in selected cases, a brief application of mitomycin C during surgery are used to reduce the risk; your surgeon decides on both.

What happens 20 years after LASIK or LASEK?

The corneal reshaping itself is permanent. What changes over decades is the rest of the eye: presbyopia brings a need for reading glasses in the forties, natural prescription drift can occur in some eyes, and cataract becomes more likely from the sixties. Cataract surgery remains possible after laser correction, with adjusted lens calculations, which is why keeping your pre-surgery eye measurements on file is worthwhile.

Will LASEK fix my reading vision as well as distance?

No. LASEK reshapes the cornea to correct distance focus, astigmatism or farsightedness. Presbyopia, the loss of near focus that starts in the forties, comes from stiffening of the lens inside the eye and is not affected by corneal surgery. People over about forty should expect to need reading glasses eventually regardless of laser correction, and should discuss this openly with their surgeon before deciding.

References

• NHS: Laser eye surgery and lens surgery
• MedlinePlus: LASIK eye surgery
• Cleveland Clinic: LASIK eye surgery

This article is for general information only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. Please consult a qualified doctor about your individual situation.