Lasik eye surgery is an expensive procedure, so to determine if it's right for your you should compare the costs of the surgery vs. a lifetime of contacts and glasses. The best candidates for Lasik surgery, meaning those who will experience the most dramatic and successful results, are generally people between the ages of 25 and 40.

These people are bothered by blurriness when performing everyday tasks like driving, watching a movie or playing sports. This group currently makes up about 80% of those who undergo the surgery. Most nearsighted patients who undergo Lasik will enjoy good distance vision their whole life. 86% of those who undergo Lasik before the age of 40 are still not wearing glasses for distance vision over nine years later. However, surgery for distance vision does not eliminate the need to wear reading glasses once patients reach middle age.

There is still some controversy over Lasik laser surgery safety, efficacy and patient satisfaction. However, most eye surgeons believe that Lasik is the best surgical procedure available today to transform patients lives when treating low to moderate myopia and astigmatism in patients between the ages of 18 and 45. Nothing else comes close in regard to refractive outcomes and patient satisfaction, which is close to 98% in recent surveys.

In comparison, popular plastic surgery procedures generate patient satisfaction between 80% and 90%, and cataract surgery with lens implantation ranks in the low 90% range. It is possible that a few Lasik patients may need a second treatment or develop some dry eye symptoms, difficulty with night vision, but these are generally treatable and resolve with time. Also, modern wavefront-guided and optimized Lasik has been shown to actually improve night vision in most patients.

A newer excimer-based procedure has shown its potential efficacy in treating presbyopia. The SupraCor is a laser procedure designed for refractive and cataract surgery that uses a presbyopic algorithm to treat myopic, hyperopic, emmetropic and eyes that were previously treated with Lasik laser surgery.

Researchers concluded that SupraCor might be a better option for patients between 40 and 55 with presbyopia. Dr. Zaldivar and colleagues used the blended vision procedure to treat 12 eyes with myopia or myopic astigmatism, and at three months post-op, they observed that mean uncorrected visual acuity was 20/30 and mean near visual acuity was 20/16. In bilateral vision, uncorrected visual acuity was 20/20 and near visual acuity was 20/16. While the initial results are positive, they say that ongoing new studies will be needed to confirm this data.