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

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. 

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. Your eye will continue to return to its natural state even after LASIK and so your results will not be as effective as they could have been, which may result in re-treatment.

 

The most conservative and, therefore, safest rule is to leave them out for 6 weeks for every 3 years you have worn hard contacts, up to a maximum of 6 months.

 

For example if you have worn hard contact lenses for 2 years and want to get LASIK surgery done as soon as possible then, you would have to wait 6 weeks while you wore glasses before I'd consider it safe to proceed.

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 usually possible for most to switch to soft lenses during this time and then just be out of soft lenses for a week or two.