What exactly is wrong with LASIK surgery that the FDA desires that the procedure be banned?

The FDA does not want to ban LASIK.

There are some people who desire the FDA ban LASIK. One of them is Morris Waxler, Ph.D ( not an actual medical doctor), who was involved in the early approval of LASIK -but has not worked there for many years. The people who want to "ban" LASIK are a mixed bag of actual patients who have had serious complications from LASIK, plaintiff lawyers, and some very conservative eye doctors. While they are certainly entitled to their opinion that LASIK is not safe, statistics do not support that conclusion as applied to the overall public. Extensive high quality research published in peer-reviewed medical journals over the last 20+ years on many thousands of patients have shown that complications are rare and that the vast majority (95+%) of patients are very happy with the results. The ever-improving technology has largely reduced the issues that were problems in the early days of LASIK. Improved diagnostic testing has made it easier for eye doctors to identify and reject patients who may be at greater risk of LASIK complications.

But LASIK is surgery -and all surgery has potential complications, even in the hands of the most experienced ophthalmologists and the very best candidates for LASIK. That is why anybody considering LASIK should be discriminating in who they allow to perform the procedure. Low-price "bait & switch" advertising is probably a good indicator of the possible quality of the surgery as is a clinic where nothing but laser vision correction is performed. There are several alternatives to LASIK that can sometimes be a better choice for many people desiring to be free of glasses and contact lenses.

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