Glasses or contact lenses

Low risk -> that paper's definition of "safety" is whether people had good eyesight. It doesn't take into account halos or dry eyes, as far as I can tell.

My feeling has always been... I've been wearing soft contacts for decades--and now multifocals. I do wear reading glasses for, well, reading and other close work when I have the contacts in. (Probably more than I really need to.) So maybe LASIK is super-safe at this point but, honestly, there's very little about my current situation that inconveniences me in any appreciable way.

I would not get refractive eye surgery if I was old enough to have reading glasses (since nothing fixes that yet), but if all you have is run of the mill myopia, a couple thousand dollars to spare, and you are 25 to 30, LASIK or PRK is one of the best quality of life improvements you can make.

The clarity with which you can see everything is stunning at first, and the lack of inconvenience is incredible. If you’re interested in dating, it is probably one of the best investments you can make to improve your experience.

You would get at least 10, maybe even 15 years of not having to deal with glasses.

Personally I had the LASIK surgery done because high correction glasses and contacts are more serious liability in sports or emergency situations than residual -1 diopter nearsightedness. (Compared to -7 D before.) Such as being able to drive a car safely without them, or read. Or work at all.

It didn't cause any halos or dry eye. Those would still be preferable over legal blindness. The bigger problem is they were unable to correct some astigmatism and so in certain conditions I get doubled image without glasses. Still not even comparable.

For low corrections or farsightedness, the risk benefit situation is very different.

I also suspect that another surgery could be risked to further improve on it once technology advances a bit more.

That's fair. My contacts were always for distance vision. But as I've gotten older, I need readers--only if I'm wearing contacts--for reading. Multi-focals improve but don't eliminate the need. So very manageable.

> and you are 25 to 30

Or older, even. I got PRK at 34 and my eyesight is still 20/20 (or better), nearly 6 years later.

> Low risk -> that paper's definition of "safety" is whether people had good eyesight. It doesn't take into account halos or dry eyes, as far as I can tell.

Yes, it was a quick search on my phone. I just remember doing a ton of research for it before I got mine done years ago. I know 6 others who got it done too around when I did, and everyone claims it was well worth it.

I just figured it has been around so long and performed so much, that there would be a lot of people claiming issues and it would show up by now.

I had PRK done 6 years ago. I was lucky and never got the dry eyes thing, but I still have some (fairly minor, I guess?) halos around lights at night. I think the trade off is well worth it, though.

I certainly know people who have had worse complications, though, and they might have a different feeling about it than I do.

It completely depends on the severity of your myopia. If it's mild, yeah, it's pretty safe. If it's moderate or severe, then things start looking a lot more dicey.

The overall numbers give a biased perspective. With the way the risk/benefit ratio varies, people with milder cases are a lot more likely to get it. This is in addition to there being more of them in the first place.

The inexpensive and non-invasive device is corrective eyewear.

Of course, but an unstated assumption for claiming any procedure is safe that you qualify as a safe candidate for it.

I think, more to the point, this advice is typically being offered by people who aren't even thinking in those terms in the first place. They're just operating from a tacit bias toward interventionism.

Well people who are not ophthalmologists who have not diagnosed your eyes should not be commenting on whether or not you are a good candidate for refractive eye surgery.

> Like what?

I believe the OP is talking about glasses/spectacles. Although contact lenses would probably also fit that description.