Straw poll - spectacles

[Jeros]

Been wearing glasses since I was about 7 or something, they are a hassle sometimes but its just a part of my life. I don't think my face looks right without them now.

Some ladies find them sexy and and say it shows "intelligence" and they "frames my face"

And others say the opposite.

Oh well.

In regards to the curving yes it does that and they do stick out past me ears.

 

[Edmond]

Well I used Optical Express as at the time they were the ones investing buckets of money into the latest hardware and surgical tools. They are now doing Wavefront Advanced which is even more accurate and tissue sparing, never a bad thing but also they use Intralase now which I would have loved. My best advice would be to book a free consultation, let them run the tests to see how thick your cornea's are and take it from there. They have centres all over the U.K. too and have been doing this over 10 years now, they cost a bit more for the very top end treatments but you get what you pay for by having access to the latest tech.

http://www.opticalexpress.co.uk/laser-eye-surgery/advanced-customvue-wavefront.html

Thx

 

[cHodAX]

Woflee. Without specific detail your post is meaningless, you can not implacate laser eye surgery without substantial evidence. 20 years of procedures and not a single case of serious malpractice. Yes there are risks, those are made abundantlly clear very early on.

 

[Ch3tan]

Thanks for the link cho, about time I got a consultation at the very least.

 

[DaGaffer]

If you're going to consider having such a thing done... think about the things they haven't told you as well as what they have told you.

frankly, if you take that attitude towards risk you'd never leave the house, and even then you'd worry about the house getting hit by an asteroid...

 

[Athan]

I always thought that people with astigmatism weren't suitable for laser eye surgery but from reading that it seems we are! I will be looking into that I think.

You're probably thinking of astigmatism and contact lenses. You can get them to correct for some amount of it, but there are limits (as it means making one side of the lens thicker and thus heavier and I guess at some limit they'll just keep sliding out of place).

I guess someone with MASSIVE astigmatism might be a case of not being able to safely nuke enough of the tissue to correct it, but then that would be the case for massive myopia as well I'd suspect.

 

[Athan]

Oh, and to get back to the original topic.

Everyone has different sized and shaped heads. Those saying "the stems always curve at my ear" either had them well adjusted by their opticians or are lucky to have an average head.

If your glasses aren't fitting comfortably go to an optician to get them corrected! If you go to the one you bought from they'll almost certainly do this for free. For what it's worth my housemate had hers adjusted at Vision Express and they didn't even check she'd bought through them (she had, but they were Gucci, so unless Gucci only sell through VE in the UK they couldn't know), whereas SpecSavers did check I'd bought through them when I went for an adjustment.

 

[Tom]

You're probably thinking of astigmatism and contact lenses. You can get them to correct for some amount of it, but there are limits (as it means making one side of the lens thicker and thus heavier and I guess at some limit they'll just keep sliding out of place).

I guess someone with MASSIVE astigmatism might be a case of not being able to safely nuke enough of the tissue to correct it, but then that would be the case for massive myopia as well I'd suspect.

That's what I have. I had surgery about ten years back to correct it (involved slicing through the membrane around the eye, cutting the muscles on one side and reconnecting them to "pull" the eye back) but I still need specs because I also have long vision. Right now, if I take my specs off everything is single vision but out of focus. If I focus, I get double vision. So the glasses I have allow me to have things in focus and in single vision. Before the op I had to have massive prisms in the lenses to do the same thing. It's a hereditary problem, my dad had the same issue.

The optician was saying that a future option might be to replace my eye's lenses completely, ala cataract surgery. Kill two birds with one stone, he said. Sounds interesting to me although I think I'll leave it for a few years.

 

[Athan]

If you had surgery to cut muscles etc that's not astigmatism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astigmatism#Ophthalmic_astigmatism is a distorted shape of the cornea. I think you may be misremembering http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amblyopia ? This latter ends up requiring a 'prism' component of glasses if present to any degree. My housemate has this issue (and had an op for it when about aged 7, but that couldn't 100% correct it).

 

[wolfeeh]

LOL. it's not my attitude towards risk in general it's my attitude towards surgery, an area in which i have particular knowledge and experience.

 

[cHodAX]

Don't envy you having to live with that Tom, good luck for the future, fingers crossed the tech and science advances to the point where it becomes a routine operation.

 

[cHodAX]

LOL. it's not my attitude towards risk in general it's my attitude towards surgery, an area in which i have particular knowledge and experience.

Your point had merit with regard to risk and being properly informed, in my own experience they told me everything and I am sure there are cases where patients were only given the pro's not the cons. That said, the success rate is very high, complications low and serious complications are incredibly low. The tech was great 6 years ago when I had mine done, it is even more refined and advanced today so while there is always a risk I honestly think it is a very worthwhile risk to take when you consider the chances of problems weighed against the quality of life improvements for the patient.

 

[DaGaffer]

LOL. it's not my attitude towards risk in general it's my attitude towards surgery, an area in which i have particular knowledge and experience.

That just makes it worse. The odds of getting hit by a vehicle on the way to the eye clinic are higher than the odds of going blind under the laser (if you live in London for example); but because you know about surgery, you upweight the risk in the field you do know about, and downweight other risks where you have less knowldege (this isn't a dig at you, this is the human condition).

The problem with medical risk is that there is simply far more statistical evidence to play with than their is outside the hospital, so problems are magnified. Its an issue that plays out in the media all the time, especially as most people don't really understand how statistics work.

 

[cHodAX]

If in doubt have the treatment at a world class eye hospital...

http://www.centreforvision.co.uk/

 

[Tom]

That's where I was operated on.

They used stitches to reattach the membrane around my eye. You know how annoying it is when you have a short hair in your eye? Imagine the pain of blinking past a stitch, for a week. It might as well have been a cube of sugar.

 

[rynnor]

I am avoiding laser surgery because I will almost certainly require surgery for cataracts when Im older and dont want to complicate it.

If we are talking healthwise nothing beats glasses - mine cut out damaging UV light and just as a physical barrier protecting your eyes they are golden.

Plus eye surgery is incredibly gross but have fun