Wearing Contacts Prior to LASIK - Non-regular Contact Wearer

Please refer to my rather lengthy reply in this forum last month about the minimum amount of time you need to be out of contacts before LASIK or LASEK. Obviously, they should have told you way beforehand about this, as handing you this information and not have you read it until you're at home is NOT the proper way.

This is the RULE OF THUMB but is VERY IMPRECISE as it depends on many factors, including type of lens, how many hours a day worn, fit of lens, decades of wear, use of artificial tears, dry eyes, etc.  So the only ACCURATE way to determine this is by a test called a corneal topography.

soft contact lenses (non-tori) - 1 week

soft lenses (toric) - 2 weeks

extended wear lenses (overnight, which are horrible for your eyes, btw) - 3 weeks

hard/RGP lenses - 1 month (supposedly 1 month for every decade of wear, but actually not true/too long)

Anyway, there you have it, by a MD who did his Cornea & Refractive Fellowship under the world-famous George Warring at Emory after completing his residency at Harvard, so please don't believe anyone on this or other forum writing in anything that sounds like a better, firmer "rule" as that's BS!:)

It is my office policy to have my patients not wear contact lenses for one week prior to LASIK or cataract surgery. There are two main reasons for this. The first is that contact lenses cause mild warping of the corneal shape, and, obviously, we want to uncover the natural corneal shape before proceeding with Laser Vision Correction or cataract surgery. The second is that the contact lenses are foreign materials and they can introduce the potential for infection, so taking a one week holiday from the lenses is a safe thing to do, as well. These are common sense requests before life changing LASIK or cataract surgery.