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About once a week I will see a patient who was told that he’s a good candidate for LASIK, but actually should probably avoid getting it. The candidacy diagnosis was wrong. Several times a week, however, I’ll see a patient that was told that they wouldn’t be a good LASIK candidate, but is actually a great candidate. Again, the candidacy diagnosis was wrong. Most commonly, the person told they shouldn’t have LASIK was given “astigmatism” as the reason.

So what makes someone a non-candidate for LASIK?

There are a lot of special cases that require a consult to address, but the vast majority of non-candidates are advised against LASIK for one or more of three reasons:

The cornea, a clear dome on the front of the eye, that is treated by laser is too thin to safely treat with laser.

The cornea has a shape to it that is too steep, too flat, or too lumpy of a dome to have predictable good results.

The lens inside the eye, not the cornea, is too cloudy to justify doing LASIK to fix the prescription.

There are other reasons someone might not be a good LASIK candidate. As an example, if you are pregnant or breastfeeding, it is usually best to wait. But all of those reasons combined end up being only a fraction of one of these three. We have a lower candidacy rate at Magruder Laser Vision than other LASIK centers because I’m pretty neurotic about every factor being perfectly aligned for someone to love their vision after LASIK.