Laser Eye Surgery Could Improve Your Sporting Life

If you wear glasses, the chances are that sporting interactions in your daily life can be troublesome. Whether you play football in your local league or you’re an avid rugby watcher, it’s possible that your less than perfect vision may impede your ability to appreciate the finer moments in sports games. Even if you wear contact lenses when playing sports, problems can persist: your eyes could get dry and itchy at the crucial stages of a match, costing you or your team a much needed victory. Or you might lose a lens during play and have to spend hours searching for it among the grass or mud. If you feel that these restrictions are a significant factor in lowering your quality of life, it might be time to think about laser eye surgery. In the past, people may have considered such surgery a dramatic option to take towards optical improvement. However, with millions of successful LASIK or LASEK procedures being performed around the world, many are coming to realise that laser eye surgery is within reach and could have an impressive effect on your eyesight – something that could be invaluable if you enjoy an active sporting lifestyle. For instance, if you’re planning a career in sports commentary or sports reporting, having great eyesight is likely to be crucial to the accuracy of your match reports. Whether you’re a recent graduate hoping to enter this field or you’re in your mid-40s and pondering a career change, considering having surgery on your eyes could have tremendously beneficial effects on your employability. What’s more, if you’re a keen golfer or tennis player with professional potential, but hampered vision means that you have to wear glasses or contact lenses, it’s possible that from having surgery you could help improve your game. And it’s not just mainstream sports players or enthusiasts that could benefit from laser eye treatments either. Competitive cyclists, for example, could perform much better if they’re better able to see that upcoming bend in the track from further ahead. Furthermore, if you’ve always been keen to try archery, shooting or any other sport that requires good aim – but you’ve been held back by poor sight – from having surgery on the eyes you could make those dreams a reality. While laser eye surgery offers clear benefits to sports players, reporters and general enthusiasts, it’s also important to be mindful of the potential drawbacks. Before making a decision to undergo the operation, make sure you seek professional advice from an optician; if you’re still unsure, a second opinion might be the best thing to set your mind at ease. Indeed, the experts will be able to offer you detailed advice on the best treatments, leading clinics in your area and, crucially, ascertain whether your eyes are compatible with the procedure. Once you’ve got all the information you need, you can go into your laser eye surgery operation with the peace of mind of knowing that, when you come out, your sporting life will be that much more enjoyable.

Giant Eye Pupils Could Put Your Laser Eye Surgery in Jeopardy

Did you ever think that having giant pupils could disqualify you from being eligible for laser eye surgery? Well they might.

The pupil is the opening or hole in the center of the iris that admits light. It’s size changes in direct response to changes in lighting. In bright light conditions, the pupil gets smaller. In poor light conditions, or when it’s dark, the pupil dilates or gets larger. Many people with larger than normal pupils are not even aware of it. If you are highly sensitive to bright lights, this is a good sign that your pupils may be larger than normal.

However, it could also be the case that your enlarged pupil is the result of drug or medication interactions with your body. In this case, the condition is most likely temporary and your pupil under normal conditions could very well be normal in size.

It’s important to recognize the fact that the size of left and right pupils are not necessarily the same. Having said that, under normal lighting conditions the diameter of an average sized pupil is 3 millimeters. The normal range varies from 2 millimeters to 6 millimeters. If you don’t know the size of yours you can find out from your optometrist who will normally measure it’s size during a regular eye exam.

So what exactly is the connection between large pupils and laser eye surgery?

If you have large pupils, some surgeons will be reluctant to ok you as a candidate for laser surgery because of previous documented problems. As with any surgery, there is always the chance that there could be post operative problems. On of the post op problems that those with large pupils have experienced following laser eye surgery is seeing persistent halos when looking at bright objects. You may, for example, see halos around car headlights, street lights, bright living room lights, and so on.

One reason why some surgeons may give you the ok and others will not is the type of laser used. When having laser eye surgery performed, the type of laser used is a MAJOR factor. One laser that has caused more and more surgeons to ok laser surgery for large pupil patients is the Allegretto laser. The Allegretto laser is a laser system that has been used in Europe since the late 1990s. It was cleared for use by the Food and Drug Administration for use in the U.S. in 2003.

The Allegretto laser can reportedly successfully treat pupils with a diameter of up to 6 millimeters. Supposedly it can reduce or eliminate the halo effect that happens when laser surgery is performed on large pupils. If the diameter of your pupil is larger than 6 millimeters, the odds that you will have an error free post op procedure diminishes. Keep in mind, however, that even under the best of circumstances that the success rate for laser surgery is in the high nineties percent range. Not 100%. And even though some doctors using the the Allegretto laser report that they have received far complaints about glare, halos, light sensitivity, and night driving glare – remember, fewer complaints doesn’t equal no complaints.

To be on the safe size, if you think that you have larger than normal pupils, take extra care even beyond what you would normally do to ensure that your post operation results will be just as you imagined it.