R U Ready To Dump Your Glasses?

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Maybe you don't mind the dents your glasses have carved into the sides of your nose. Maybe you actually enjoy cleaning your contact lenses. But if you're anything like the 160 million other people in the U.S. who wear contact lenses or glasses, then you've probably occasionally wondered what your life would be like with perfect vision. Oh, what a beautiful prospect! No more foggy spectacles on winter days. No more fishing for dropped contacts in the bathroom sink. No more misplaced glasses when you're rushing off to work.

You could turn those dreams into reality--in less than 15 minutes. Just settle onto the surgical couch at an ophthalmologist's office and let an incredibly precise excimer laser reshape your eyes, or more accurately your corneas. Then get up and experience a bright new world. At least that's what doctors--and, more important, their ecstatic patients--are saying about LASIK. That's short for laser-assisted in situ keratomileusis), which could well become the most popular elective surgery among baby boomers since they all had their tonsils removed in the 1950s.

Chances are you already know people who have had their eyes--in that newest of buzz verbs--lasered. Nearly 500,000 Americans are expected to undergo the procedure in 1999--almost double the number in 1998. For 7 out of 10 it worked spectacularly: it corrected their vision to a very normal 20/20. Most of the rest still saw well enough to drive without corrective lenses. By 2010, some surgeons predict, LASIK will have advanced so far that 90% of patients will see better than 20/20. That's impressive for surgery you couldn't get in the U.S. until just four years ago.

Most patients aren't just happy with the results; they're positively gleeful. "Everything is so clear," says Yvonne Chapman, a registered nurse in Los Angeles who had her corneas reshaped six months ago. "I still go into the bathroom before bed every night to wash my hands and take my contacts out because I think I have them in." Never mind that LASIK costs upwards of $2,500 an eye and isn't covered by most insurance companies. We're talking about seeing your toes in the shower!

Still feeling unsure? Then drive over to the Fair Oaks Mall in Fairfax, Va., outside Washington, and watch through a plate glass window as surgeons at the Visual Freedom Center perform the operation Mondays through Saturdays. Talk to the patients as they walk out the door. They will tell you how excited they are to be finally throwing away their glasses.

Now for the reality check. "LASIK is a surgical procedure with all the attendant risks of any surgical procedure," says Dr. Mark Mannis, a professor of ophthalmology at the University of California at Davis, who has performed the operation on a weekly basis for the past four years. "It is highly successful in the vast majority of well-chosen cases, but"--and here you have to pay close attention--"each of those words I said is very important." The best candidates, he emphasizes, are those adults whose sight is only moderately distorted, whose vision is stable and who have no other eye problems. Even so, complications occur that can't always be corrected.