LASIK is a laser eye surgery that reshapes the clear front surface of your eye (the cornea) to correct nearsightedness, farsightedness, or astigmatism. The procedure takes less than 30 minutes, most patients drive themselves to their follow-up appointment the next day, and satisfaction rates sit around 95% for people correcting nearsightedness.
How LASIK Corrects Your Vision
Your cornea is the dome-shaped tissue at the very front of your eye. It bends incoming light so it focuses on your retina. When the cornea’s curve is too steep, too flat, or uneven, light doesn’t land where it should, and you see a blurry world. Glasses and contacts compensate by bending light before it reaches your cornea. LASIK fixes the cornea itself.
The surgeon first creates a thin, hinged flap in the outer cornea, then folds it back. A computer-guided excimer laser then removes microscopic amounts of tissue from the exposed layer underneath. Each pulse of the laser vaporizes a precise sliver of cornea, flattening it if you’re nearsighted or steepening it if you’re farsighted. The whole reshaping takes about a minute per eye. Once the laser finishes, the flap is laid back into position, where it adheres naturally. No stitches are needed.
What Happens During the Procedure
You’ll be awake the entire time. Numbing drops go into your eyes, and a small device holds your eyelids open so you don’t have to worry about blinking. For the flap, your surgeon uses either a mechanical blade (a microkeratome) or a femtosecond laser. The laser approach, sometimes marketed as “all-laser LASIK” or “bladeless LASIK,” creates the flap by generating thousands of tiny gas bubbles inside the cornea that separate the tissue into a flap. Either method is well established.
Once the flap is lifted, you’ll be asked to stare at a small light. The excimer laser fires while a tracking system follows your eye’s position. After the cornea is reshaped, the surgeon smooths the flap back down and places a clear protective shield over your eye. The shield stays on while you sleep for the first night or two to prevent you from accidentally rubbing the area.
Recovery and Getting Back to Normal
Most people notice dramatically improved vision within hours of surgery, though your eyes may feel gritty, watery, or sensitive to light for the rest of that day. Keeping your eyes closed as much as possible for the first several hours helps healing. You’ll need someone to drive you home, but almost all patients meet legal driving requirements by the next morning.
Here’s a general timeline for resuming activities:
- Driving: typically the next day
- Showering: the next day, but keep soap, shampoo, and water out of your eyes for the first week
- Light exercise (walking, stationary bike): 3 to 7 days
- Jogging and light weights: about 1 week
- Heavy lifting and intense workouts: 1 to 2 weeks
- Eye makeup: at least 2 weeks, and use new products to reduce infection risk
- Swimming, hot tubs, lakes, and oceans: at least 2 weeks
Your vision continues to stabilize over several weeks. Some fluctuation during that period is normal.
Dry Eyes After LASIK
This is the most common side effect, and it’s nearly universal at first. About 95% of patients report some degree of dry eye symptoms immediately after surgery. At the one-month mark, roughly 60% still notice dryness. The good news is that post-LASIK dry eye peaks in those first few months and then improves steadily. The vast majority of patients see symptoms resolve between 6 and 12 months after the procedure. Your surgeon will likely prescribe lubricating drops to use during that window.
Other Risks to Know About
Beyond dry eyes, some patients experience halos, glare, or starbursts around lights at night, particularly in the first few months. These visual disturbances usually diminish as the cornea heals. In rare cases, the flap can shift or develop wrinkles if the eye is rubbed or hit, which is why contact sports like boxing, wrestling, and martial arts are a concern (more on that below). Serious complications that threaten vision are uncommon, but LASIK is permanent. Tissue that’s been removed cannot be put back.
There’s also the question of long-term regression. Your eyes can continue to change over the years, especially if you were highly nearsighted. Studies tracking patients for a decade found that roughly 18% to 29% of those with moderate to high nearsightedness eventually had an enhancement procedure to sharpen their results. For people with mild prescriptions, the rate is lower.
Who Can Get LASIK
You need to be at least 18. Your prescription should have been stable for at least a year, meaning no changes to your glasses or contacts in that time. Your corneas also need to be thick enough that removing tissue won’t compromise their structural integrity. Most surgeons want a minimum of about 270 microns of corneal tissue remaining after the procedure, though 310 microns or more is considered ideal. A pre-operative exam with detailed corneal mapping determines whether you meet these thresholds.
Certain health conditions can disqualify you. Autoimmune diseases like lupus or rheumatoid arthritis, immunodeficiency conditions, and diabetes can all impair the healing process. Medications like steroids or retinoids may do the same. A history of eye conditions such as keratoconus (a progressive thinning of the cornea), glaucoma, or recurring eye infections like herpes simplex involving the eye also raises red flags. People who regularly participate in contact sports where blows to the face are common may want to consider a flapless alternative, since the flap could be vulnerable to displacement from a direct hit.
LASIK vs. PRK vs. SMILE
LASIK isn’t the only laser vision correction option. If you’re not a candidate for LASIK, or if you prefer a different approach, two main alternatives exist.
PRK (photorefractive keratectomy) skips the flap entirely. Instead, the surgeon removes the thin outer layer of the cornea, then uses the same excimer laser to reshape the tissue underneath. Because there’s no flap, PRK is often recommended for people with thinner corneas or those in contact sports. The trade-off is recovery time: it takes about a week for the outer layer to grow back and two to six weeks for vision to fully clear up.
SMILE (small incision lenticule extraction) takes yet another approach. A femtosecond laser carves a small disc of tissue inside the cornea, and the surgeon removes it through a tiny incision rather than lifting a flap. Recovery takes one to two days, slightly longer than LASIK but far shorter than PRK. Because the incision is small and no flap is created, the cornea retains more structural strength, which may reduce dry eye symptoms.
Satisfaction and Results
LASIK has some of the highest satisfaction rates of any elective procedure. Among nearsighted patients, studies report overall satisfaction around 95.5%, with only about 4.5% expressing dissatisfaction. For farsighted patients, satisfaction is somewhat lower, around 84% to 96% depending on the study and questionnaire used. In terms of visual quality, about 93% of nearsighted patients and 96% of farsighted patients report meaningful improvement in the clarity of their vision after the procedure.
These numbers don’t mean every patient ends up with perfect 20/20 vision. Some people still need thin reading glasses as they age, and others with high prescriptions may not reach 20/20 but still see a dramatic improvement. The pre-operative exam is designed to set realistic expectations based on your specific prescription and eye anatomy.