Please be on time, i.e. arrive at the LZW at least 15 minutes before your appointment. You can request a sedative and painkillers. The eye is numbed with drops; you will not be given an injection. Laser surgery is painless. In the first few hours after LASIK surgery you may have a foreign body sensation, as if a foreign object were scratching the eye, you may experience watery eyes and blurry vision. These symptoms will disappear after 2-3 hours.
How long does the procedure take?
The actual procedure takes only a few minutes. Including pre-LASIK and follow-up examinations, you should plan to be at the clinic for 1 to 1.5 hours. After surgery, you can recover in our recovery room.
What you should know:
Generally, you will have nearly normal vision the day after LASIK. We will provide you with special plastic eye shields to wear for the first few nights. During the first few weeks, you will also have to use different types of eye drops, as instructed. Call us immediately, if you experience severe pain or a sudden deterioration.
Do not rub your eye(s) for the first week after LASIK and do not use any make-up. You must not get water in your eye(s) when you wash your face or take a shower. After a week, you may gently rub your eye(s). For the first wo weeks after your LASIK procedure you should avoid anything that can put strain on your eyes, such as swimming, saunas or diving. In the first few weeks there will still be slight changes of vision. This will stabilise after approx. 3-4 weeks.
As a general rule, the less the vision defect before LASIK, the greater the chance that you will not need distance glasses after surgery. Even with optimal success – i.e. no need for distance glasses – you should expect that you will need reading glasses, but this is also true for most people with normal vision from about 50 years of age.