Hello everyone and thanks to all who share their energy to keep this site going. sorry for poor english in advance.
I've been considering long to have refractive surgey and been searching many sites and medical journals to make up my mind (in fact to wipe away my fears as i really do).
as i mentioned above, i did a pretty deal of research ( i know it is never enough) and at last found a doctor advised to my mother, a prof at a medical school, by her colleagues. this doctor works for a eye hospital chain in Turkey where i live. The chain really scared me cause i dont like the idea of mass eye surgeries. I had my pre-op exams and finally saw the doc to talk about my results. he said that my eyes had two risk factors and he would not suggest refractive surgey to me. he said i had thin corneas and (this is where i've all searched for lost its meaning because of the limited capacity of my medical understanding :) ) there was some sort of assymetry between the topografies of my cornea. he said one had vertical something and the other ????. According to my results, my corneas were about 510microns both. he explanied that there was risk of ectasia, which i know how develops. he said he would not do lasik and if i insisted he might go for epi-lasik which would reduce the chances of ectasia for about 80-90% compared to lasik. i said if he considered me a risky patient then i would not have any surgery, thanked him and left his office.
At first i was really glad as i thought he told me the truth and just did not try to get me on the table. however some time later i started to wonder if he was just being too conservative. As far as i know, any cornea thickness between 500 and 600 mic is considered to be normal. Although my corneas are on the thin side i ve come across my experiences where surgions performed operations. being not satisfied i went to another doc and had all the exams once again. this doc is also an famous doc (if it does any good???) and also has an office in the netherlands. not to my shock he said i was eligible for lasik. since the first doc already ruled out lasik, i had also made up my mind to go with surface ablation ( if i can have any surg) prior to this second doc. i asked him why i was eligble and told him about the first doctors concerns. he said my readings were within the limits. when i asked about corned thickness he made a simple calculation showing that my stroma would be thicker than somewhere more than 300mic with intralase lasik. (my corneas turned in around 10mics thicker at this exam). i declined this option and said i would only have surface ablation. he did not seem willing and made jokes about me beign whether masochist (not with an intention to insult) and i would curse him all the way through first two nights. seing me determined he said ok to epi-lasik if it would make me fell more relaxed. this came right before i asked him about my pupil size. he said they were 8mm!!. they are huge. when asked if this was a problem he said ok once again. i returned to home to do some more searches and read about usaeyes' "Lasik Halo and Starburst; Pupil Size Importance" and other sources.could not reach a final conclusion!! dropped at the second medical centre the other day to learn if these results were from my dilated eyes (drops) and learned they were from dim light. once again research and they were measured with "colvard pupillometer".
do you think having 8mm pupils is a problem for surface ablation particularly for epi-lasik (not custom). think they use Allegretto.
my readings follows.
right -3.00 (-1.00 ax90)
left -4.75 (-0.25 ax30)
according to my orbscan from first doc :
right:
white-to-white(what is this??): 12.0mm
pupil diamater:3.9mm
512um@(-0.8, -0.6)
left:
white-to-white: 12mm
pupil diameter:4.0mm
518@ (-0.4, -0.2)