Dry Eyes After Lasik and All-Laser Lasik

Dry Eyes after Lasik is a common condition during the immediate recovery period. If you have dry eyes before conventional or custom wavefront Lasik, All-Laser Lasik, PRK, LASEK, or Epi-Lasik, you may not be excluded as a candidate for refractive surgery, but it is a condition that you must report to your doctor. Pre-existing dry eyes needs to be evaluated, treated, and resolved before surgery.

This article is about why dry eyes occur and how to prepare before surgery. A related article is  Lasik dry eye treatment.

Tear Quantity, Tear Quality

Two popular methods to test for dry eyes is a Tear Break-Up Test (TBUT) to determine tear quality and a Schirmer test to determine tear quantity. Dry eye treatment will depend upon the cause and severity of the dry eyes. Dry eyes is a medical condition and treatment would normally be covered under by major medical insurance plans.

Lasik Induced Temporary Dry Eyes

It is common to experience dry eyes for a short period after Lasik, All-Laser Lasik and sometimes PRK and its cousins LASEK and Epi-Lasik. Virtually everyone who has Lasik or All-Laser Lasik will experience dry eyes, but the important issue is to what degree and for how long.

For the vast majority of refractive surgery recipients, the degree of dry eye symptoms is not significant enough to cause difficulties. Even those who do have some trouble most often find the dry eye symptoms resolve within the normal six-month healing period. For an unfortunate few patients, Lasik induced dry eyes is a long-term complication that, although manageable, may be very disruptive.

There are many techniques to reduce the probability of dry eyes being induced by surgery, but most are the responsibility of the doctor. Prevention of Lasik related dry eyes is primarily focused on proper patient selection and treatment of pre-existing dry eye prior to surgery.

Drowning In Artificial Tears

There are many techniques to treat dry eye. The most common are preservative-free artificial tears, lubricating gel, punctal plugs, Restasis, and flax seed oil supplements. The technique best suited depends upon the exact nature of the tear deficiency and underlying cause. There are many types of artificial tear eye drops for slightly different purposes.

Less Dry Eye With Surface Ablation

Although PRK, LASEK, and Epi-Lasik may induce dry eye symptoms, Lasik and All-Laser Lasik seem to be the more commonly associated with dry eyes. This is partly because the Lasik techniques are more disruptive to the corneal nerves than PRK and LASEK. For this reason, patients with preexisting dry eyes may find PRK, LASEK, or Epi-Lasik a better choice. Other techniques such as CK, Intacs, RLE, and P-IOLs only marginally disrupt the corneal nerves, but have their own limitations. Whatever the surgery of choice, the less the corneal nerves are disrupted, the faster the nerves recover and normal tear function returns.

Be sure to discuss any dry eye problems (before or after surgery) with your doctor.

If you are ready to choose a doctor to be evaluated for conventional or custom wavefront Lasik, All-Laser Lasik, PRK, LASEK, Epi-Lasik, NearVision CK, RLE, or any refractive surgery procedure, we highly recommend you consider a doctor who has been evaluated and certified by the USAEyes nonprofit organization. Locate a USAEyes Evaluated & Certified Lasik Laser Eye Surgery Doctor.

If this article did not fully answer your questions, use our free Ask Lasik Expert patient forum.

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Current Lasik Dry Eye Medical Journal News...

Five-year outcome of LASIK for myopia.

Related Articles

Five-year outcome of LASIK for myopia.

Ophthalmology. 2008 May;115(5):839-844.e2

Authors: Kato N, Toda I, Hori-Komai Y, Sakai C, Tsubota K

PURPOSE: To investigate the efficacy and safety of LASIK over a 5-year postoperative period. DESIGN: Observational case series. PARTICIPANTS: We examined 779 eyes in 402 patients with myopia or myopic astigmatism who underwent LASIK to correct their refractive errors and received regular postoperative assessments for 5 years. METHODS: Postoperative examinations were performed 1 day; 1 week; 1, 3, and 6 months; and 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 years after LASIK surgery. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: We evaluated changes in uncorrected visual acuity (UCVA) (logarithm of the minimum angle of resolution [logMAR]), manifest refraction, best-corrected visual acuity (BCVA) (logMAR), intraocular pressure, corneal thickness, corneal endothelial cell counts, and complications. RESULTS: Preoperative UCVA of 1.27 improved to -0.03 at 1 day after surgery and -0.08 at 1 month and revealed minimal but significant decreases thereafter. Postoperative manifest refraction was also improved by surgery, showing minimal but significant regression after 1 year. Final BCVA loss was seen in 10 eyes of 7 patients; in 7 cases, there were obvious reasons such as the progression of cataracts in 3 eyes, epithelial disintegrity due to dry eye in 2 eyes, irregular astigmatism due to flap striae in 1 eye, and age-related macular dystrophy in 1 eye. Intraocular pressure and corneal thickness decreased by 4.0 mmHg and 76.9 microm, respectively, due to surgery, but remained stable throughout the follow-up period. Corneal endothelial cell counts (2689.0+/-232.9 cells/mm(2) before surgery) showed a statistically significant decrease at 5 years after surgery (2658.0+/-183.1 cells/mm(2); 1.2% loss for 5 years), likely within the range due to physiological age-related loss. No serious, vision-threatening, irreversible complication such as keratectasia or progressive endothelial cell loss was observed. CONCLUSION: LASIK surgery is an effective and safe procedure for correcting myopia/myopic astigmatism as long as inclusion and exclusion criteria are strictly respected. However, minimal regression occurred during the 5-year investigative period.

PMID: 17900692 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]