Advertisements for Lasik Eye Surgery – How good are the Claims?

You might have come across several advertisements that claim Lasik Eye Surgery will help a person totally eradicate their need for wearing contacts or glasses. The FDA has refuted these claims and has really toned down the level of claims of these advertisements. But, still you need to be wary about what advertisements claim.

The marketing methods employed by those promoting Lasik paint a very rosy picture enabling a person to view the beauty of the world without using any glasses or contacts and try to entice the persons interested in the procedure with ornate and elaborate words. These are supported by testimonials, provided often by celebrities and other powerful people who have the influencing power to send a person interested in the procedure packing to the eye care professionals.

There are still other endorsement techniques such as coupons, raffles and seminars along with incentives provided for referring others and tall promises guaranteeing vision improvements to a scale of 20/20. The charade does not just stop over there. When you visit the Lasik specialists, the person in charge of counseling might just be doing further promotion rather than actually assessing whether the person is right for the procedure.

While some of these marketing techniques may be classified as undamaging and even tolerable, many of these are even abhorred by the medical fraternity, many esteemed hospitals and even the FDA.

You need to be well-informed about the various marketing tricks that are employed and avoid these kinds of places that try to lure you with their gimmicks. You must also become aware of the risks that are involved with the procedure that never gets a mention in any of the advertisements promoting Lasik. Even an ethical practitioner might not inform you completely about the risks involved but if you are more aware about the procedure and its risks you might be able to assess how frank the eye care specialist is with you.

Lasik surgery is a skilled and delicate procedure requiring the use of equipments such as the microkeratome, a laser that is computer controlled as well as a surgical knife. The biggest risk you are undertaking is the risk of putting your organ system responsible for vision for surgery. The risks involved with the procedure involves the possibilities of break down of the computer’s hardware or the software or any other parts of the equipment and not to mention the probability of error committed by the surgeon.

Usually, most of the patients undergoing Lasik surgery have got good results out of the procedure but, there is a small group who has had certain complications such as reduction in night vision, starbursts and halo vision after having the procedure. Some rare cases of people going blind due to the risks of Lasik have also been reported.

These problems that are seen may not immediately crop up after the surgery but occur when the associated muscles and nerve structures are not able to cope up with the other changes following the surgery. This small percentage of people in comparison to those who have had good results from the procedure is not a very high number, but high enough to have paved way to the origin of a legal specialty called Lasik Injury Law to protect this small percentage of people from the associated problems arising out of the procedure.

Many a times, competition forms the root cause for all problems that arise. Due to the competition levels among specialists providing the procedure, there may be false promises, over expectations and misrepresentation in the way the patient gets informed about the procedure. The grounds for this are quite apparent, but not acceptable.

The equipment needed for conducting the procedure does not come cheap. It is also a costly affair to maintain the equipment. The staff and technicians that provide assistance to the surgeon are also highly paid not to mention the other overheads that arise in running the practice. All these are in addition to the time and expense taken by the surgeon to learn and master the technique. In order to justify the huge expenses, the practice should have a good number of cases of Lasik that often initiates the need for going in for tall claims through advertising and other marketing techniques to promote the procedure.