Originally Posted by
rickair7777
If you are a professional pilot and can pass an FAA first class medical, you should think carefully before getting vision surgery.
Do they offer LASIK or PRK? LASIK is better in many ways, but the military has historically prefered PRK since it doesn't penetrate the structure of the cornea.
There is always a smal risk of complications.
Another concern is your Best Corrected Visual Acuity (BCVA). I'm about 20/100 without glasses, but I correct to 20/15 with glasses. Laser surgery can improve your uncorrected acuity by reshaping the cornea while at the same time damaging the cornea and reducing your BCVA. Someone like me might go from:
20/100 (uncorrected) and 20/15 (corrected) to
20/25 uncorrected and 20/20 corrected.
So I end up with MUCH better vision without glasses, but even with glasses I can only see 20/20, so I've lost 5 points on the eye chart. This is actually pretty common, and is not likely to ever be correctable. It is also possible to lose enough BCVA to end up worse than 20/20, like say 20/25. This would make you ineligible for an FAA first class medical without a waiver.
Anyone who knows anything about laser eye surgery will STRONGLY recomend a VERY experienced surgeon...the military doc is likely to be somewhat junior, and it's military medicine. I've found they are very good at some things (like orthopedic surgery) but not so great at other things.
There is also a new procedure, a version of LASIK, which instead of just carving your cornea into a perfect geometric shape uses a laser to measure the optical imperfections INSIDE your eyeball. Then it cuts your cornea to the right general shape AND adds intentional deviations to the cornea to cancel out the inner-eye imperfections. This procedure can actually give you a serious INCREASE in BCVA by correcting those inner-eyeball errors which were previously not correctable. 20/10 uncorrected would not be uncommon. This is the procedure that I would be looking into for myself...hopefully the military has the new equipment.
Excellent advise by rickair as usual. Another point to consider is that in some countries eye surgery is an automatic disqualification. For example, if you wanted to do contract work for any of the Japanese carriers - which can pay very well - any eye surgery is an automatic disqualification.
I've had friends who opted for LASIK obtain vastly different results. Some are very satisfied but one can no longer hold a 1st class due to night vision problems that he developed post surgery. If you're a military pilot your uncorrected vision can't be that bad to start with right? If you have good vision with glasses, I wouldn't take the risk associated with surgery no matter how small. It's kind of like playing russian roulette with your career in my book...