If your eyesight has stayed the same, it is one of the most important things to consider when deciding if LASIK surgery is right for you. The FDA has decided that 18 is the required minimum age for LASIK surgery. Before surgery, your doctor will want to make sure that your prescription has been stable.
During your visit, refraction is done to find out how bad your astigmatism, farsightedness, or nearsightedness is. To guarantee that the surgical results will benefit you in the long run, doctors prefer to see that your prescription for glasses and/or contact lenses has been stable for at least a year or two.
Best age to get LASIK:
Fortunately, there is no set age limit for the LASIK procedure. There is no reason why an older person cannot have refractive surgery if they are a candidate and in good general and ocular health. Of course, doing this early in life makes more sense so that you can benefit from the results for a longer length of time.
Here are the general suggestions for laser eye surgery for people of different ages, assuming they are healthy in other ways.
Children and adolescents younger than 18:
- Up until the age of at least 18. Therefore, specialists advise against having vision correction surgery until this age because the benefits will only last a short time and the patient will be forced to wear glasses as soon as their eye prescription changes as a result of normal growth.
- Additionally, since LASIK is an optional procedure, it is preferable if the patient is of legal consent-giving age.
- To cure significant refractive defects in individuals under the age of 18, particularly those with amblyopia or lazy eyes, LASIK has been used successfully in cases when conventional treatment with glasses or contact lenses has not yielded the best outcomes.
18 to 40 years of early adulthood:
- The majority of specialists prefer to perform the procedure as soon as the prescription for glasses has been stable for a year because it is thought to be the best age for laser vision correction.
- It is because it offers nearly twenty years or more of complete independence from eyewear. It is also the age group that has historically been the target demographic for refractive surgery.
Age group: 40 to 60 years old:
- Presbyopia develops after 40 and cannot be treated with standard laser vision techniques. However, your doctor will go over the potential for monovision with you.
- It offers a realistic and easy solution for this age group to be free of both distance and close-vision glasses.
60 Years and Up- Golden Old Age:
- It is dependent on the individual’s eye health and the tasks they need to do each day, so there is no hard and fast rule about how old a person may be taught to read.
- Patients who do not have a cataract or any other organic cause for their vision loss and who have no medical contraindications to LASIK can do so without risk.
- Additionally, the patient needs to be aware that cataract growth is unavoidable and cannot be stopped by laser vision. Additionally, laser vision correction surgery may be performed to improve vision without glasses in the tiny fraction of patients who did not have the expected vision correction following cataract surgery.
Senior Citizens Over 60 Years- Special Considerations-Existing Conditions:
- The majority of eye conditions are age-related. Age-related macular degeneration (AMD), cataract, glaucoma, and dry eyes are all more common in the elderly population, so senior people pursuing LASIK must be carefully assessed.
- The elderly are also more likely than the young to have abnormalities of the cornea’s basement membrane, which can lead to corneal abrasions and sluggish LASIK recovery. Therefore, the appropriateness of the person for LASIK will be determined by a thorough eye evaluation.
- Amiodarone is one drug that should not be used by elderly people before having LASIK. Amiodarone is an antiarrhythmic medication that controls the heartbeat.
- Light sensitivity, inadequate corneal healing, blurry vision, glare, and colored halos around lights have all been associated with its use.
Close-up Vision Issues:
- Most people over the age of 45 will need to wear reading glasses. Whether they grew up needing glasses for distance vision or not, makes no difference; this is still the case. LASIK cannot reverse this age-related decline in near vision caused by the natural lens’s lack of flexibility.
- Eye physicians frequently bring up the possibility of mono-vision to lessen reliance on asses. This provides clear distant vision under normal viewing situations since the dominant eye’s distance vision is corrected; we rarely close one eye and look in the distance.
- The other eye is not properly corrected for distance, so it has a better vision for close-up tasks like reading small print and seeing the time on a watch or phone.
- Since they do not require glasses for either distance or reading under normal binocular settings, seniors typically adjust to mono-vision very well.
Exchange of Refractive Lenses for Seniors:
- Refractive Lens Exchange is an alternative for older people who are not good candidates for LASIK (RLE).
- The native lens of the eye will be removed during this treatment and replaced with an implant. Implantable lenses can reduce or perhaps do away with the requirement for corrective eyewear to see up-close items.
- For those with significant farsightedness and mild to moderate nearsightedness, RLE is an option for LASIK. RLE is a successful solution for treating ageing eyes.
The natural lens of the eye starts to get hard beyond the age of 40, making it challenging to focus at all distances. Therefore, intraocular lenses (IOLs) may significantly enhance the patient’s ability to focus on both close and distant things.
While it can undoubtedly have an impact on your candidacy, age is by no means a strict barometer.
Ask an eye surgeon if LASIK is a good option for you if you are over 21, in excellent health, have a stable eye prescription, and want to stop using glasses or contacts.
Conclusion:
- There isn’t a universal recommendation that applies to every patient. The requirements for eligibility for the procedure are constantly changing because of advancements in laser correction technology and safety.
- Age is only a number, just like anything else you might desire to strive for and do in life.
- A thorough eye exam to identify eligibility and your visual requirements will also help evaluate whether laser vision correction will be successful for you.
Finally, don’t allow your age to prevent you from seeing an ophthalmologist regarding laser vision correction.
