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How Long to Wait for Lasik Surgery Without Wearing Hard Lenses?

How long do I need to go without wearing my hard lenses before having lasik surgery?

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contacts discontinue timing

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5 Doctor Answers | Asked by texasbrit

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LASIK surgery (Laser Eye Surgery) with a history of wearing hard contact lenses.

The longer you wait to have LASIK surgery, often referred to as laser eye surgery, the better! RGP contacts (hard contact lenses) work by distorting the shape of the cornea (the front surface of your eye) and in order to do LASIK effectively we need your cornea to be in it's natural state. If you have LASIK done too early after wearing hard contact lenses then the measurements that will be input by the ophthalmologist into the laser won't be based on your natural corneal shape.... more

How Long To Keep Out Hard Contact Lenses Before LASIK

My rule of thumb for leaving out hard or gas permeable contact lenses before Lasik surgery is "one month per decade of wear." Now, I know you are groaning, but this has been my rule for the 18 years I have been performing Lasik in the US and a few years before that during the FDA trials. What this does is give the corneas time to go back to their natural shape, rather than their lens warped state. Sometimes as a bridge, if the time period is going to be 3 or 4 months, we will fit the patient... more

Anthony J. Kameen, MD

Baltimore Ophthalmologist

www.kameen.com

Time out of Gas Permeable Lenses before LASIK

Unlike soft contact lenses, gas permeable lenses can substantially change the shape of the cornea. The absolute answer for the time to be out of gas permeable lenses is based on serial refractions and measurements of the cornea called topography. A good rule of thumb is one month per decade of wear. If not enough time is spent out of lenses, it is probable that an enhancement procedure would be required that may be much more difficult than just having waited. It is... more

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Most doctors will suggest that you be without hard contacts for 2-3 weeks prior to surgery. This is because the hard contact lens itself can change the shape of the cornea and change the prescription of the eye.

Hard contacts RGP before LASIK LASEK

The rule of thumb in the textbooks used to be 1 month out of RGPs for each decade of wear. in reality, this rule is overly conservative, and you don't need to wait that long i am recommending a newer rule of thumb, which is a month out, then do a topography or orbscan or wavescan to check for warpage it's not the time out that matters, it's however long it takes to unwarp the tricky thing is after RGPs your astigmatism actually goes UP in the unwarping process, as... more

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