Medical Malpractice

Your vision is crucial, and it is important that you find a highly qualified and experienced LASIK surgeon that will not only deliver the best possible LASIK surgery but also minimize the risk associated with this procedure. A skilled LASIK surgeon can not only affect the degree to which your vision is corrected but also give you peace of mind knowing that you have received the best and most precise surgery possible.

In general, the best way to find a qualified LASIK surgeon is to check the credentials of the proposed LASIK surgeon at the websites of the American College of Surgeons and the American Academy of Ophthalmology; At the minimum, the surgeon should be a refractive surgeon, a member AND a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons, and a member of the American Academy of Ophthalmology. The surgeon preferably should also be associated with an academic medical center, such as a university hospital or institution.

After checking for skills and a specialty in the field of refractive surgery, the next considerations that you should consider for a LASIK surgeon are experience and quality of equipment. Here is a list of questions that will help you to determine these:

1. How many years has the LASIK surgeon has been performing LASIK eye surgeries? The surgeon should have been performing LASIK eye surgeries for a minimum of three years.

2. How many surgeries has the surgeon performed? The surgeon should have performed at least 500 within the past two years.

3. How many surgeries has the surgeon performed which included the type of refractive procedures that will be used for your specific procedure? The number should be at least 100.

4. If your procedure involves higher order aberrations, will the surgeon perform a Wavefront diagnostic prior to recommending LASIK surgery itself? This is a very important test to have, and not every doctor has the equipment to perform this test. A doctor can easily refer a patient to another office for this test however, and it does not mean that he or she is otherwise not qualified to perform the procedure.

5. What percentage of the surgeon's patients achieved 20/40 vision after the LASIK procedure? The number should be 90%; anything higher should be verified with proof provided by the surgeon.

6. What percentage of the surgeon's patients achieved 20/20 vision after the LASIK procedure? The number should be around 50%, with anything exceeding 65% being verified with proof provided by the surgeon.

7. What types of LASIK technologies does the surgeon offer? It is very important to remember that a LASIK surgeon who has extensive experience with older technologies is MUCH better than an inexperienced LASIK surgeon who possesses the newest technologies; overall, the technology is much less important than the surgeon's ability to use them.

8. Has the surgeon ever been denied malpractice insurance? This answer should be no.

9. Will the surgeon perform corneal topography before and after the surgery? This answer should be yes.

10. What can I expect my vision to be like both immediately after the LASIK surgery as well as two weeks after the surgery? The surgeon's explanation should include minor vision fluctuation regression, halos, and minor starbursting at the very least.

11. What can I expect my recovery process to include? If the surgeon attempts to present LASIK surgery as a quick 20 minute process that will give you perfect vision without any complications, you should consider another surgeon.