Is It Safe to Fly After Lasik Surgery?

When I was at Harvard, one of the surgeons there who had LASIK went to climb K2, which is the 2nd tallest mountain in the world after Mt. Everest. Unfortunately, he developed corneal edema (water-logged cornea), as when you have LASIK you wind up with a two-piece cornea, and the 2 pieces never fully join as well as if you didn't have a "sandwich" configuration, so the upper flap got watter-logged because the corneal endothelial cells that pump the water out of your cornea constantly don't pump the water out of the flap as well. Anyway, he pretty much lost vision and had to descend (but it came back a few days afterwards)
In the more advanced, safer, noncutting LASEK I now perform exclusively, this wouldn't have been a problem, as you don't cut the cornea, it's not in 2 pieces afterwards, so your natural pumping cells can fully pump out the water from your entire cornea afterwards--even on the top of Mt. Everest!

This is why, if you're a jet fighter pilot or test pilot, they don't want you to get LASIK, but you can safely get LASEK, as if your cabin loses pressure you won't go blind, so hopefully you can maintain control long enough to descend (this is assuming not a total loss of pressure, in which case your blood would boil).

So, there is no pressure problems with LASEK, unlike LASIK. If you fly commercial, all I tell my patients is to use tear gel and drink lots of water and avoid the free alcohol and bad movie, as you don't want to dehydrate your eyes after either LASIK or LASEK on a plane! I’m having patients fly in from abroad weekly to get my LASEK, as in many countries they only do the older cutting LASIK procedure, so I actually get this question a lot!

Flying is generally safe after LASIK surgery. But, since the eyes tend to be drier after surgery and airplanes are notoriously dry environments, I would recommend bringing a lot of lubricating eye drops on the trip.