Lasik surgery may carry more risk than thought

NBC News February 8, 2001 ran an article on LASIK surgery and the unknown dangers. The NBC report started with, "About 2.6 million Americans are expected to get LASIK surgery, the most common form of laser eye correction, this year. Ads for it are everywhere. But they seldom mention the side effects that strike tens of thousands of patients a year."

Dr. Richard Braunstein of Columbia University says, "doctors often don't describe the dangers and patients don't listen." He goes on to say, "Patients who have a problem often feel surprised they had a bad result from the surgery. It's not a risk-free event, no medical procedure is a risk-free event."

According to the NBC report even the experts admit they don't know what the complication rate is from laser vision correction. The best guess is 5 percent or less, but there have been no big studies to try to find out.