Lasik In Los Angeles: What You Need to Know

LASIK offerings in Los Angeles are plentiful.

Advertisements boast everything from $399 an eye to $2500 per eye. Lower prices may seem enticing but would you trust your heart surgery to a discount heart surgery clinic? So why the huge price discrepancy?

Here are a few things to look out for when shopping for your LASIK procedure:

Tiered Pricing: Many offices offering LASIK will determine the price of the procedure based on the strength of your prescription. A lot of the $299 per eye offerings is a price point based on the patient having the weakest prescription that’s legally operable. This has been challenged as unethical and in certain parts of the country and with some states outlawing the practice. The LASIK procedure is intrinsically the same no matter what the prescription is.

Type of Laser Used: What brand of laser is being used? Some LVC centers use what’s called “black box lasers” These are machines made outside of the US or modified in such a way as to avoid paying royalty fees to the manufacturers. This frequently means a lower per procedure cost but at the same time the laser does not get upgraded with the newest technology available to date. The treatment is cheaper but you get inferior quality vision.

Outdated Technology: Traditionally, this first step of LASIK, creating the corneal flap, was done using a fine, oscillating, hand-held steel blade called a microkeratome. In fact most LASIK complications were flap related. Nowadays, with the development of the Intralase method, touchless, bladeless LASIK, is possible. In this procedure the flap is created with a laser a process that allows for a more precise and thinner flap, yielding better quality vision with smaller incidence of complications.

Wavefront is the latest advancement in LASIK technology. Wavefront guided ablations allows physicians to fully customize the LASIK procedure to each patient’s unique visual system. Wavefront systems work by measuring image distortion produced by the optical system of the eye. This in essence creates a unique 3-dimensional optical map of the eye, highlighting individual imperfections. These customized measurements are used to design a custom cornea treatment. Wavefront guided custom treatments frequently provide patients with sharper, crisper vision than is possible to achieve with glasses. Wavefront guided custom cornea treatment usually adds to the cost of the LASIK procedure.

One Stop Shops: Many LASIK centers are run like factories, marching the patient through the process in a very systematic and impersonal way. Sometimes the patient does not meet the surgeon until the surgery day or worse yet, until they are already under the laser. “Look at the blinking light” could be the first words you hear from your surgeon. There may also be hidden costs in post-operative surgical care or extra costs for surgical enhancements, if they are ever needed.

Your vision isn’t something to be taken for granted. When looking for value in LASIK consumers must factor in surgeon skill, experience, reputation as well as the technology utilized and not just price.

Arthur Benjamin, MD

Benjamin Eye Institute