Diseases that can be treated with laser

• Shortsightedness (myopia)
  
• Astigmatism
  
• Longsightedness (hypermetropia)
  
• Cornea surface dimness removal
  

Who can be treated with laser

The eyes must be healthy. If you have any condition that can affect how your eyes respond to surgery or heal afterwards, you must wait until that condition is resolved. Examples are chronic dry eyes, conjunctivitis and any injury. Some conditions, such as cataracts that interfere with your vision, keratoconus and uncontrolled glaucoma, may disqualify you from treatment completely.

You must be an adult. Certain procedures require you to be 18; others, 21. Younger patients can be treated only as an exception.

You must have stable vision for at least a year. Many young adults experience changes in their glasses and contact lens prescriptions in the teenage years. Vision stabilizes most often sometime in their 20s. Usually, it is nearsightedness gradually becoming worse, but there may be other changes as well. They are not good candidates until their eyes have "settled down" into one prescription. Your doctor can advise you about whether or not your prescription is stable.

If you are pregnant, certain hormonal changes will affect your eyes. Surgery should not be performed until your hormones and vision have stabilized and returned to normal after the pregnancy.

Degenerative or autoimmune diseases may be disqualifiers, too. If your body has any trouble with healing, your refractive surgery outcome will probably not be very good.
 
Your prescription must be within certain limits. For example, very high amounts of myopia, which would require too much removal of corneal tissue, may preclude LASIK or make another type of refractive surgery a better option.