Marketed as a high-tech but simple and glamorous option to glasses, the $2.5 billion Lasik eye surgery industry will be the eye care of choice for a million Americans this year who want to end their astigmatism, nearsightedness or farsightedness.
Editor's note: Improve your vision in just minutes a day -- without glasses, contacts, or potentially dangerous lasik surgery.
Lasik stands for laser-assisted in situ keratomileusis: Surgeons wield a special knife to cut a circular flap in the eye down to the cornea, reshape the cornea with the computer-calibrated laser, then replace the flap.
An estimated 3% of patients --- 30,000 people and 60,000 eyes in 2001 --- will have lasting complications such as double vision and halos, or starbursts, around lights at night.
"I tend to see four to six people a week who have had problems," said Dr. Barrie Soloway, head of vision correction at the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary.
New Jersey opthamologist Dr. Joseph Dello Russo said 10% to 15% of patients at his Manhattan office come to see him to repair Lasik surgery performed by other doctors.
Problems are bound to be more common with Lasik's mushrooming popularity in a fiercely competitive market, experts say.
"This is the first time a medical procedure has been advertised to the public in a competitive way, the way you advertise a six-pack of Coke," said Ken Keith, a malpractice lawyer.