Suspicion of Keratoconus - You Need BETTER Advise
If someone told you that you can get LASIK if you have any suspicion of Keratoconus is clearly wrong. Cutting into your cornea will further destabilize it, making your “forme fruste KC” which it sounds like you may have worse, which would be ridiculous, and pretty much malpractice.
We have done plenty of patients with irregular topography and high astigmatism with an advanced surface ablation, either LASEK or epi-LASEK
You would have to come in and we would do an OrbScan on you, which is a $50,000 machine that is 10x better than the topography machine that you were probably “screened” on (which is why topo machines only cost $5k)
For a proper evaluation, you would also have to be out of your contacts, and taking preservative free artificial tears. The time out varies based on your lens fit, but the rule of thumb looks like this:
- Daily disposable lenses: 1 wk
- Extended wear or toric lenses: 2 wks
- Hard contact lenses: 1 month
So anyone who told you that you were or were not a good candidate, if you were not out of your lenses for a proper amount of time, is either careless, sloppy, or clueless.
In any case, I did a full cornea fellowship at Emory University under the most famous refractive surgeon in the US, George Waring III MD, which is why I know my stuff, and may also be why I am also a bit obnoxious and intolerant of supposed “experts” who say things they really don’t know anything about. Also feel free to download this article about Keratoconus that I co-authored.
I would be willing to bet you $$$ that at least 1 of the 2 MDs you saw never did a cornea fellowship, never did corneal transplants, and never saw 1000 patients with FF KC like I did, which is really a shame because if this is true, they probably shouldn’t give “expert” advice since they are not actually experts!
In any case, I suggest you call my office, reiterate what we discussed, they are ccd on this anyway, and make an appt to see me for a medical 2nd opinion about your FF KC, we will charge your medical not vision insurance, waive your copay to be nice to you so it costs you $0, and bill it appropriately to your medical insurance, so we get compensated fairly for the 1 hour your proper visit will take with us.
