Many surgeons not familiar with LASIK are reluctant to adopt it for several reasons: it is much more technically demanding and should not be performed by the occasional surgeon, it is much more expensive, and there is the fear of damaging the cornea with a "bad cut" across the cornea. Our results have proven that such severe problems are extremely rare if LASIK is performed by experienced surgeons!

In 1997, the Doctors performed a systematic review of their first 5000 cases of LASIK in order to assess its safety. Such an analysis should consider 2 time frames: operative (at the time of surgery) and post-operative (in the months following surgery).

Operative:

• in 8 eyes, the keratome created a flap that was either too thin or too short. In all cases the flap was re-positioned and surgery was successfully performed 6 months later. In no such case was there a reduction of the best corrected potential vision of the eye.
  

Post-operative:

• 3 eyes required re-positioning of the flap on the following day since the patient had rubbed the eye despite the protective eye-shield;
  
• After the first day, no patient developed any degree of flap displacement ("wrinkles") which might affect the quality of vision;
  
• There were no cases of infection;
  
• There were no cases of corneal scarring (commonly seen after surface ablation);
  
• There were no cases of significant debris beneath the flap requiring re-lifting and cleaning;
  
• There were no cases of outer skin cells invading under the flap requiring relifting and cleaning the flap ("epithelial ingrowth");
  
• The number of eyes losing 2 lines of vision on the eye-chart was extremely low (0.08%).
  

Clearly, the safety of LASIK was confirmed by this very large series of patients which we have presented at several international meetings.