Don’t be blind to the fact that Lasik surgery can be risky
FOR every 500 people who go for Lasik surgery to correct their short-sightedness, doctors say at least one could end up in a situation where things go terribly awry.
With an estimated 45,000 people believed to have gone for the procedure – where the cornea is reshaped to improve vision – since it was introduced here in 1996, that could mean about 90 had complications.
Another 3% to 4% – or up to 1,800 people – may have had less-than-perfect results.
Yet watchdog Singapore Medical Council, which investigates complaints of negligence against doctors, has received only one involving Lasik surgery over the past three years. Figures for the time before that are not available.
The real reason patients don’t complain is that they can’t – the forms they sign consenting to the procedure limits any grounds for complaint.
The forms pointedly warn you that you could go blind. You could see double, or end up with fluctuating or hazy vision. Your ability to drive could be impeded. And, of course, there is possibility that your vision may remain under-corrected.
Doctors, meanwhile, say in private that the form is “particularly kiasu” for an operation with very little risk. Mention danger and the standard retort is: People have died from liposuction but not from Lasik.
Two patients had failed operations. One is a 40-year-old finance professional who ended up with distorted vision that cannot be corrected by glasses or soft contact lenses, a condition called irregular astigmatism.
Since his operation in 2000, he has had to use conventional hard contact lenses, or put up with seeing a blurred collage of shapeless forms.
The other patient is 39-year-old corporate trainer Doris Ong, whose case is that solitary Lasik complaint to the medical council.
Although she can see clearly, her May 2003 operation, which cost her almost S$4,000 (RM9,352), failed to give her what she wanted: to see without glasses. – The Straits Times/ANN
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