New York LASIK doctors

i think you should see your surgeon and make sure you have your punctum plugged in that eye, increase the viscosity of your tears, make sure you are taking preservative free drops, increase their frequency, get a humidifier, decrease caffeine and alcohol, increase water, start Restasis, and use a gel at night

after a month of all this, if it's still not better, you may need an enhancement, but only if you notice this with both eyes open. if you only notice if you close the other eye, you should probably leave it alone, as leaving a little residual myopia will prevent needing reading glasses for several more years than normal

just tell all this to your surgeon and he will probably agree!:)

the teaching in the books seems to say that a person's refractive error (Rx) changes with pregnancy

if this is true, it would make sense not to do LASIK or LASEK around pregnancy, as the Rx would change

however, this is one case where what the books say is probably not actually true

think about it: if it were common that your Rx would change in pregnancy, you'd hear people say things like, "oh, i just had to get new glasses/contacts because the prescription changed because i got pregnant, you know"

if it were true, you'd say, "oh, yeah, i've heard that happen, my sister (for ex) had to do that"

instead, you'd actually say something like, "WHAT? i have NEVER heard of that happening?!"

i've done LASIK and LASEK on about 100 women who got pregnant by accident, not really meaning they had an unplanned pregnancy, but that they didn't know they were pregnant when they came in for their free consultation or testing or surgery, so we unknowingly lasered a pregnant woman

in 100% of these cases (100 out of 100), they did ABSOLUTELY FINE WITHOUT ANY COMPLICATIONS and did NOT have a worse or less predictable outcome than the non-pregnant women (or men for that matter)

so i think this is something that should be taken off the books, and there is no reason not to laser pregnant people, as this doesn't change their outcome in any way, as i could detect, out of 100 cases in the past decade

you should, however, avoid possibly risky medicines in the postop period after you know you are pregnant, like restasis, and probably not have MMC in the OR, and get punctal plugs to decrease systemic absorption of the steroid drops into breast milk

but again, i've also lasered about 100 people who didn't admit they were breast feeding, or if they did, we just pumped and dumped for a few days as they were on these meds, so their risk was pretty much zero!:)

i've used and been certified on both these platforms. neither one of them offers a true Custom WaveFront treatment. the Nidek can do custom in Japan, but their more advanced laser never got FDA approval in the US, because they're selling so few lasers here it wasn't worth doing the FDA trial in the US, as that costs over $1 million.  the market share of Nidek for LASIK in the US, by the way, is about 1%. meaning 99% of the procedures in the US are done on a different platform. the only reason to use a Nidek laser in the US now is that it is cheaper to use it than most other lasers, because it doesn't require a royalty or "click" fee. so doctors or centers wanting to cut prices below the competition often use the Nidek, as that's one way to reduce their costs. i used to use a Nidek EC 5000 laser myself, but that was way back in 2000, when that was a state-of-the-art laser.

in terms of the Allegretto, that, too, is not a true Custom WaveFront platform. it is so not true wavefront, that FDA prohibited that company from marketing it's laser as "WaveFront" and required them to tack on a modifier: "WaveFront-OPTIMIZED"  this is like USDA requiring the makers of Velvetta to call their product "cheese-FOOD" or makers of soy "milk" to label their product "contains no dairy product"

the Allegretto platform takes a true WaveFront scan, but then does this weird thing where it then matches your scan against it's internal database of a few hundred profiles, and then chooses the "best fit" sphere. so your treatment is optimized, but not truly custom. in other words, for every laser treatment done on the Allegretto, there is someone out there, somewhere in the world, getting an IDENTICAL treatment. the market share of the Allegretto laser in the US, btw, is about 5%

my preferred laser platform is the VISX, because unlike the above laser brands, it DOES perform a true custom WaveFront correction. it takes a unique wavescan of your eyes, each of which is like a fingerprint of your prescription, so that no other person ON THE PLANET has the same scan. then that scan is saved in the computer, and transferred with a flashdrive into the VISX laser. it is a true custom system

VISX is by far the dominant laser in the US, with about 75% market share. this means there have been more eyes lasered on the VISX platform than all other laser brands--COMBINED

you can get excellent results on either a Nidek or Allegretto laser. just be clear that neither are true custom wavefront platforms. if i were getting my own eyes lasered (i was the 1st LASIK surgeon in NYC to get LASIK himself, and i did it on a VISX), then i would choose the Allegretto over the Nidek, if i were being lasered in the US. outside of the US, i might choose the Nidek, especially if i were in Japan where they have the newest version w the upgraded hardware and software

don't worry, you can and probably will have excellent results, no matter what platform you choose, they are all good, just some are true custom, some are non-custom, and some are pseudo-custom