How Long Will the Post-lasik Eye Surgery Goggles Need to Be Worn for Protection?

I instruct my patients to wear their goggles while sleeping for 1 week following the procedure to prevent them from rubbing their eyes.  If you are involved in any contact sport (martial arts, Basketball, etc), it would be wise to wear a pair of rec specs for several months following LASIK to prevent any inadvertant injury.

LASIK is a procedure in which a flap is created and structurally weakens the cornea.  Usually, goggles are worn for one week at bedtime to avoid rubbing of your eyes during the night.  If you participate in contact sports, it is wise to wear goggles after LASIK, especially basketball or any activity in which a poke to the eye may occur. Alternatively, other procedure known as ASA, or advanced surface ablation [modern PRK], can be used to reshape your cornea, give you excellent site like LASIK with less structural weakening.

a LASIK flap never heals, so even years out, if you get hit in the eye, the flap can come back up. in contrast, in LASEK there is no flap, so you don't have to worry about trauma afterwards so you really have to use goggles forever for contact sports if you have LASIK that's why martial artists from all over the world use LASEK as it is risk-free in terms of postop trauma (unlike LASIK)

I provide both sunglasses and sleeping goggles to my Lasik patients and encourage them to wear the sleeping goggles for three nights.  I do extend that, in some cases, however. A few examples would be for patients who sleep with their head buried in the pillow, or others who may have young kids that come bounding into their bed at 3AM. In these cases I recommend a week or even longer. The main notion is to protect the eyes from trauma for the first week or two post Lasik and to acknowledge that "Murphys Law" is very much in effect after any surgery. That being  said, I have not had a Lasik flap move after surgery in 10 years. I feel the all laser aspect of the surgery is the reason for this. Mechanical creation of the flap(which I don't do any longer) has a higher incidence of flap movement post op. The laser created flaps(thats all I do) are much more stable.