“How long is the recovery from laser eye surgery?”

Depending on the precise surgery recovery could take anywhere from a few hours to a few days. Side effects, complications, and alternatives should be discussed in detail with the surgeon.

Of course yes. Side effects depend on the type of refractive procedure. His surgeon should be helpful answering your questions which vary based on a number of factors unknown to me from your question.

Laser visual correction will give you good vision the next day, if you are below 40 years. You will need reading glasses after aged 40 years.

This is a great question and will vary based on what form of Laser eye surgery is being performed. If it’s LASIK the vision is usually very clear the very next day. With PRK the vision will be “drivable” (about 20/40 or better) within a week and usually progresses to its final endpoint over the course of the first month. Lastly if this is Laser assisted cataract surgery then his vision typically recovers in the first 24-48 hours. LASIK in my experience can cause temporary dryness that resolves usually 4-6 months. Some patients with higher corrections will have haloes at night and in my experience those resolve in the first month. PRK is similar for haloes but I find it to typically not induce as much dryness and actually rarely see dry eye complaints from it. Lastly cataract surgery is intraocular surgery and can carry higher risks of things such as infection (very rare <1:1000) and inflammation. You can also see transient dry eye with cataract surgery but it typically resolves quicker than lasik as the incisions are much smaller (on the order of 1-2 months). Hope this helps!

That depends on several factors, including the type of laser operation; ie. LASIK, or PRK. Both will usually result in dramatic improvement almost immediately, but there will usually be some residual haze and glare for up to a few months and he can expect symptoms of dryness for many months, so artificial tears will be important in his recovery. Complications are uncommon but a partial list would include over and under correction, flap problems in LASIK, and rarely severe problems like infection and even blindness. This may be "laser" surgery, but it's real surgery and should be taken seriously.

There are at least two types of laser eye surgery commonly performed in the US. Recovery time for LASIK is usually a few days. PRK can take a week or more and final vision can improve out to 6 months. You should ask the surgeon what type of surgery he is getting and the expected recovery based on that.

Frank Cao

In the best of circumstances, a patient can have functional vision the following day. Full recovery can take weeks to months, but that is referring to final stability of the vision.
Best of success.

Best regards,

David J. Pinhas, M.D.