Letters: Nov. 1, 1999

THE LASER FIX

Thank you for the wonderfully balanced article on laser surgery to reshape the cornea and help improve vision [HEALTH, Oct. 11]. As a cornea-trained ophthalmologist who performs LASIK, I am always concerned that patients will have unreasonably high expectations because they have heard only the "good side" of the surgery. Although the results are impressive, we are currently not able to achieve more than a 60% to 70% portion of 20/20 vision because of the range of biological variation in the general population. Not all people correct predictably after a given amount of applied laser energy. Remember, the...