LASIK - How Old Do I Have to Be?

By Jeffrey Martin MD

Published on April 07, 2010

Laser vision correction has been performed millions of times over the last decade. Many people qualify for LASIK while others are better suited for a surface laser eye surgery procedure such as PRK. With LASIK, Dr. Jeffrey Martin, of Smithtown, New York, claims that doing strictly bladeless custom LASIK or iLASIK is the best way to perform LASIK. At his Long Island LASIK practice, he creates flaps for LASIK using Intralase and does all custom laser eye surgery ablations using Wavescan by VISX. This assures the best results with custom LASIK and iris registration is used in every case possible.

Some patients are curious about the minimum age requirements for LASIK. Patients are able to have LASIK at 18 years of age, but many patients are still changing quite a bit as far as their prescription goes. Dr. Jeff Martin states that in a younger patient, he is more aggressive in his correction knowing that patients will still change a bit. The analogy is wearing a shoe that is slightly bigger than your foot knowing that you will grow into it. Dr. Martin also offers free LASIK enhancements if necessary and sometimes sees patients eight to ten years following their initial LASIK procedure. Even in those cases, Dr. Martin performs enhancement at no cost. This makes his patients comfortable that they do not need to worry about that aspect of their vision correction.

Patients need to speak to their laser vision correction specialist to decide what age is best for them. In his free LASIK evaluations, Dr. Jeffrey Martin discusses the options, risks, and benefits of laser vision correction, and recommends the appropriate course of treatment to patients.