Good and bad news..

[rayvendawn]

Good news first, I hit my one year anniversary of having intralasik done. My vision has changed very little since the surgery and all change happened in the first three months. I am very happy with the way things have turned out! I still deal a little bit with dry eye sometimes but mostly on windy dry days.

Bad news.. my grandfather told everyone at work about how wonderful my surgery turned out. I have been telling people as well and I didn't think anything of it. He had been talking to a guy in his late 40's about the lasik and he talked him into it and even had him go to the same doctor that I use.
This gentleman went to the same doctor and is now in the hospital and may be blind for the rest of his life. I feel so bad like this is my fault, he wouldn't have had the surgery if it weren't for my grandfather and my expirence.
The doctor I went to was supposed to have more lasik surgeries under his belt than anyone in the world, he was the first in all of texas to own a lasik machine. Everyone knows about him and people from other states come to him because he's so famous.
I don't know if I should share his name on this board or not but I sure do feel bad about this. :(

[LasikExpert]

We don't allow doctor names in the forum, so you don't need to make that decision.

I founded this organization in 1997 and have made thousands of postings in many forums. I wrote most of the main articles in our website. In all that time I have never told anyone privately or publicly to have Lasik. I try to relate the facts I have researched and allow people to come to their own conclusions.

Something I say often is that you would not put in your friend's contacts and expect to see well. Neither can one person expect the same Lasik result that was achieved by another. Everyone is unique.

Although Lasik is considered safe and effective by medical standards and has a relatively low complication rate, there is no such thing as perfect surgery, a perfect surgeon, or even a perfect patient. Things can, and do, go wrong. Problems may not occur very often, but one must always remember that to achieve the convenience of a reduced need for corrective lenses, one must accept some element of risk.

"Survivor's guilt" is a common, and some would say healthy, response to a situation like this. Try to keep perspective and remember your apparently limited involvement. You may also need to be supportive of your grandfather as I’m sure he feels as bad or worse.

Can you tell us more about what happened to the patient? Hospitalization after Lasik is unheard of.

[agent99bm]

rayvendawn,

You must remember, also, that he had to have signed all the usual disclaimers when he had his surgery. He had to be aware that there was a risk. It's a shame he has complications. I hope he recovers.

[slee104611]

You are not responsible. There may have been a pre-existing condition or something in the man's medical history that led to blindness. According to my pre-op research and what my Dr told me, no one has gone blind in the United States from LASIK except 1 case decades ago where that patient was almost legally blind going into the surgery.

I had a situation a few years ago where I lost a LOT of weight and my friends wanted to know what I did and I told them I started working out at the gym with a trainer and watching what I ate and that I HIGHLY recommend a healthier lifestyle. A few months later, one of my friends joined a gym, got a personal trainer, and while working out suffered from a stroke and is permanently in a hospice unable to talk or walk.

Would you say that I'm responsible for this? I personally felt TERRIBLE for my friend but can honestly tell you that I do not nor ever felt even a twinge of guilt or responsibility for the stroke. If I had not lost weight and my friend never went to the gym, would things have been different? - perhaps but at the end of the day, each person's outcomes are impacted by a different and unique set of variables that you cannot control.