Sunny Health


Yes, perfect eyesight has always been a requirement for work that requires great precision, agility and intense physical activity. In the past, only candidates with perfect peepers could be pilots in Singapore. Soldiers serving National Service would not be considered for Pes A if they were bespectacled. And as you might have seen in almost every sporting event, the number of sportsmen and sportswomen who wear glasses are almost always nil.

But times and lifestyles have changed, and many Singaporeans are wearing glasses from a young age. Jobs that used to require perfect eyesight have now relaxed their criteria. More optical services are providing contact lenses that make the need to wear glasses more bearable.

Nevertheless, the inconvenience of not having clear vision is here to stay. Maintaining contact lenses for safe use is a hassle, not to mention that contact lenses could still get in the way of intensive activity, especially for sports fanatics who indulge in vigorous exercise. Most contact lenses are not suitable for swimming and any sort of sport that requires direct contact with water. Your game is gone once perspiration gets into your eye and you have to extract your contact lens.

Lasik came as a solution for those who find poor eyesight a burden to many aspects of their life.
Having the perfect eyesight is no longer an unattainable task. The advancement in today’s medical technology has allowed many people to forgo spectacles and contact lenses with the introduction of Lasik.

However, Lasik surgery is not suitable for everybody who has eyesight problems. It is only able to correct certain problems such as Myopia, Hyperopia, Astigmatism and Presbyopia. When you go for a pre-Lasik consultation, your doctor will conduct an examination and advise you on your suitability to undergo Lasik.

How is Lasik Surgery carried out?
The doctor will first remove a part of your cornea with a special blade or laser to create a flap. This will enable the laser beam to gain access to deeper parts of the eye. The laser will then flatten some parts of the tissue in the eye, depending on how much correction it needs.

An animation of this procedure can be seen here.

Risks of Lasik Surgery
Like all surgical procedures, Lasik surgery also has risks. As Lasik depends mostly on laser to do all the cutting, there may be a chance of the tissue in the eye being undercut or overcut. When the tissue is being undercut, the vision is not fully corrected, but this can be easily solved by undergoing the same procedure again. Overcorrection is harder to fix as it is caused by removing too much tissue from the eye.

Glare, halos and double vision can result from Lasik. Although this side effect can be easily treated by medical eye drops that contain corticosteroid, you may also need to undergo a second surgery. Your vision at night or in dim light can also be greatly reduced.

As the surgical procedure for Lasik involves cutting a flap at the cornea, during the healing process, the flap may be infected that will result in complications, having too much tears and swelling.

Lasik will result in a reduction in tears production for the first six months after your surgery. This might affect your vision, but eye drops can be used to lubricate the eyes. However, if you experience severely dry eyes, you can consider going under the knife again to put in special plugs into your tear ducts to prevent your tears from being drained away.

You will also need to avoid strong light in the first six months after surgery, because your eyes are particularly sensitive at this point of time.

Preparing for surgery

1. Remove all eye makeup. You should stop wearing eye make up the day before and the day of the surgery. This will ensure that there are no traces of make up on the eye that could cause infection.

2. Stop wearing contact lenses. You will be instructed by your doctor to stop wearing contact lenses a few weeks before your surgery. Contact lenses can change the shape of your cornea, resulting in inaccurate measurements for the surgery that can result in a poor outcome.

3. Lasik is a day surgery and you would not have to be warded. Have someone pick you up after the surgery. The medicine used during the surgery may have certain side effects after the surgery and your vision might also be blurred.

If you wish to consider Lasik surgery, do remember to consider all the side effects and make sure you are able to spare time and resources to counter them. If you’re a sports person, be prepared to sacrifice your favourite outdoor activities for a few months as you’re encouraged to avoid bright sunlight to facilitate faster healing. If you’re banking on Lasik to make your life easier, you might have to think twice about it as post-surgery complications may pose even more inconveniences.

Of course, one might argue that such inconveniences are only temporary. After all, as all athletes can attest, there’s no sweet without sweat.