I opted for PRK due to flap concerns when I got my vision corrected last year (best thing I’ve ever done). I had mine done at a surgical practice with two doctors. The doc who did my consult and performed my procedure sold me on the PRK due to my concerns about the flap and what it could mean to my career if something happened.

At one of my follow ups I had to see my surgeon’s partner. He was an older doc and had been doing vision correction surgery for nearly 20 years. He asked why I had chosen the longer recovery of PRK over lasik. I explained that I was a pilot and concerned about eye/vision damage if the flap came loose. He said that in 20 years he had seen it actually happen twice and he was able to replace the flap both times. One was a result of a screwdriver to the eye. The other was from a dog attack. Both patients went on to continue to have great vision after he repaired the damage. He said the moral of the story is that if you have a career that is highly vision dependent (like a pilot), the flap isn’t really a concern. He said that if a person sustained enough trauma to the eye to dislodge the flap to the point of disrepair, that person would have sustained heavy and permanent eye and vision damage regardless of the lasik flap. At that point a loose flap would be the least of the persons concerns - their vision would be jacked either way.