To be a good LASIK candidate, you need to meet several requirements and yes, one of them is age. This is true of both young and old ages.

Not Too Young

There would be little benefit in having LASIK done if your eyes are not yet fully developed. Further growth would at least partially negate your LASIK vision improvement. The age of 18 is considered the minimum age for a successful LASIK procedure.

The LASIK laser works not on the corneal surface, but below the surface on the layer called the stroma. Once the eyes are mature, the stroma is a stable layer and will retain the new shape given to it by the LASIK laser. On the corneal surface, cells will continue to be discarded and washed away by tears, and new ones will take their place – but this is a protective process and does not affect your visual clarity.

Not Too Old

When we arrive at mid-life, age 40 or so, we start to develop presbyopia. That happens to everyone, though for some it may start later, perhaps age 45 or 50. It is a progressive loss of near vision and requires reading glasses. Because it is progressive, any LASIK correction would be relatively short-lived, as age continued to impair near vision.

However, there is a way of doing LASIK that can treat presbyopia at least for the short term, and that is LASIK Monovision. One eye is left as it is for far vision and the other is treated for near vision. This requires the brain to relearn how it processes vision data.

However, since presbyopia is progressive, the blurriness will slowly continue to increase and will affect both eyes. Your vision at near, far, and intermediate distances will gradually become blurry.

After age 60 or 70, there is the added factor of cataracts – cloudiness in the eye’s lens. A good option for both cataracts and presbyopia is replacement of the natural lens with an artificial lens, as is done in cataract surgery.

If you are over 18 and wondering whether to have LASIK, the best thing to do is schedule a consultation with one of our eye doctors. You can get your questions answered and schedule whatever eye tests your doctor thinks would be necessary.