It’s been just over a year now since I had my lasik operation and one article I’ve been meaning to write is my own personal experience with the most common complications of lasik surgery. I decided a while back to narrow this list down to the top five most common complications reported by lasik patients post surgery.

Before I write about my experiences however, I thought it’d be useful to present the top five complications I was going to write my experiences on. This was my personal experience article will be a little easier to read as I won’t be explaining the complications but rather just presenting my experience with them.

So with that in mind, here’s the top five most reported lasik laser eye surgery post operative complications (try saying that fast five times).

1. Dry eyes

By far the most common side effect of lasik laser eye surgery is the experience of dry eyes. Although self explanatory symptom wise (your eyes feel itchy, duh).

Most commonly a symptom of the natural healing process of your eyes post lasik surgery, dry eyes should resolve themselves after a few months – at best after a few weeks and at worst up to six months.

If you’ve still got dry eyes after six months post surgery when not using lubrication drops, then there’s a good chance you’re stuck with the problem permanently or something might have gone wrong during the healing process or during your surgery itself.

In both cases it’s a good idea to pay a visit to your lasik surgeon and get some advice. Most places I asked info from boasted about their post op care plans so there’s a good chance this is as easy as just making a phone call to the clinic.

2. Night time vision suffering from halos, starbursts and glare

The second most commonly reported lasik surgery complication is a loss of quality in the patients night vision. This usually manifests itself in the form of halos around sources of light, starbursts from oncoming lights or glare blocking out your vision significantly, or in severe cases altogether.

The good news is again these symptoms are usually a part of the natural healing process of your eye and should resolve after a few months if they occur. The bad news is that if they persist then you might need to resort back to glasses or additional laser eye surgery procedures to remedy the problem.

3. A loss of contrast in vision

One of the most worrying complications is that of contrast reduction in a patients day to day vision. A loss of vision contrast can affect your quality of sight (even if everything is in focus) during the day, and at night hamper your ability to make out objects.

Naturally this can affect certain aspects of a patients life such as their ability to drive, read, watch television and movies comfortably and of course the mental irritation of knowing something’s just not quite right with your vision as you look at things.

4. Under correction and over correction

Despite relying on computer readouts and extensive testing, it’s still possible that your lasik surgeon might crunch the numbers wrong and either under correct or over correct your eyesight.

The problem with this complication is that because of the healing process it’s important not to jump to conclusions immediately after your lasik procedure. Your eyesight might appear to be over or under corrected but there’s no way of knowing for sure until the eye has properly healed itself and can be retested.

5. Sight regression

Ideally post lasik eye surgery operation you want your eyes to settle in for a perfect 20/20 vision or if possible, slightly better.

Unfortunately due to the often unpredictable nature of our body’s own healing mechanisms, some lasik patients can suffer eyesight regression. It’s predicted that most lasik patients will need glasses as they get approach the later stages of life but for some it can occur much earlier.

What happens with premature regression is that following a lasik surgery procedure your vision appears properly corrected but then begins to slowly deteriorate over time.

Unfortunately from patients who suffer from this complication, you have to wait until your eyesight naturally settles itself before any corrective procedures can be undertaken.

This could be a few months or even over a year depending on the individual characteristics of your eyes.


The good news is that with each of these complications, the overall percentage of patients that suffer ongoing problems with lasik eye surgery complications is quite low.

Thankfully I didn’t suffer any major complications or ongoing side affects following my lasik eye surgery procedure but I did experience varying degrees of side effects. Look out for my own personal experiences with the above side effects in an upcoming article.

1. 5 things to ask your lasik eye surgeon before surgery
2. My one week checkup after Lasik eye surgery
3. Lasik Eye Surgery: My operation experience
4. 10 must read blog posts on laser eye surgery
5. Getting laser eye surgery done: The first consult