A typical LASIK surgery will take only a mere fifteen minutes to perform. The LASIK recovery period takes a bit longer and varies a bit from person to person based on what type of LASIK surgery they had and what condition they were correcting. Most patients will experience immediate results after their surgery, allowing for the fact that there will be some light sensitivity and blurriness for the first few days or rarely even weeks.
Most doctors will recommend keeping your eyes closed for the first couple of hours in your LASIK recovery period, this helps keep constant lubrication and helps your eyes to better heal themselves. Most doctors should give you shields to avoid light hurting your eyes. These shields can usually be removed in two to four hours after surgery when you are awake, but usually stay on for a couple days when you sleep, this is important in your LASIK recovery.
Minor bleeding can sometimes occur
Most doctors will prescribe something else to help your eyes, such as antibiotics to help reduce the chance of infection or anti-inflammatory drops from inflammation or pain. If you are having light sensitivity, which is common in LASIK recovery, he may advise you wear dark sunglasses for a few days until you can stand the light on your own again. A lot of doctors also recommend if you are unable to naturally fall asleep that you take a light sleeping aid as the very best treatment for pain is sleeping for a few hours and letting your eyes heal.
Things like watching TV or reading are highly discouraged, this will be hard on you pain-wise and a strain on your eyes that they do not need after such an operation. Another thing to remember in your LASIK recovery of eye surgery is to never rub your eyes even though after surgery they may itch or burn slightly. Try to resist the urge and wear your protective shields or sunglasses if you have to. Your eyes need to be relaxed and untouched to get fully better.
Try taking baths versus showers in the first week and never apply makeup to the eye area, just tiny dust fragments from eye shadow can get under the corneal lens before it fully fuses back together and this can cause a massive infection. Also, make sure in your LASIK recovery that you avoid smoking yourself or being around other’s that do as this can also get into your eyes, literally and at the least really cause a lot of pain.
Complications from LASIK are very rare and most patients have such a speedy LASIK recovery that they can return to work and or normal daily activities the very next day. Most people report only very little pain in their LASIK recovery period and in a short period of time many surgeons will request a follow-up exam to make sure your eyes are healing properly.
In these visits you will be able to track your LASIK recovery and how you epithelium is growing, responding, and healing and of course see how much closer to that perfect 20/20 vision you are getting. Most people are very happy with their LASIK recovery and results and hopefully you will be too.