Does your night vision change after PRK or LASIK eye surgery?

If you are a truly good candidate and the laser vision correction is done with the most up-to-date technology, you should not have any night vision issues occur. These are things such as halos, rainbows around lights, "smearing" of lights, or double vision. Even with the best treatment, however, these optical side-effects will occur in at least some for, though typically decreasing over about 3 months to nothing. They are rarely enough to interfere with driving or other nighttime activities.

If you have never had the same good night vision as your friends, it is possible you have what was once called "irregular astigmatism" or now "higher order aberrations." These can actually be treated along with the nearsightedness and astigmatism such that some patients actually see an improvement in their night vision. This is called wavefront-driven or wavefront-optimized laser vision correction.

_Written by J. Trevor Woodhams, M.D. - Chief of Surgery, Woodhams Eye Clinic