Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Competitive Shooting Lasic eye surgery?

Diopters sure help. AS do tinted lenses, the correct rear aperture for the light, IE adjustable.

Light not on my sights, at least on my service rifle sights, really sucked for me, I had to swap out to a larger rear ap, and go to a bright tinted lense and then hope the sun didn't pop out.

I'd probably die if I had to shoot from inside with minimal light on the sights... BUT I did dry fire a lot inside and shot air rifle a lot inside for practice, but had nothing to gauge that by...

If you can shoot 1/2 inch with a scope the your ability to see detail is probably fine.
If you feel like you can see the sights well enough with your "good" left eye then Lasik may be enough to help you out. If not the you may need aperatures or diopters or some other aid to increase you depth of focus.
I would hate to see you give it up without a fight if you really enjoy it. dean

I"ve had to use all kinds of combos over the years to keep shooting up till age 42. I have a horror of what it would take now.

I am nearsighted(can see up close but not far away) and have been since a teenager. I"d love to drop the glasses but have always not sure if the procedure had been perfected yet.

Almost sounds like it might be time to look into it. Vision with astigmatism has been basically on the order of -2.25 and hasn't varied much over about 30 years or so.

Was always afraid if they screwed up I"d never shoot again in competition.

Jeff

What is your age now? If you are about -2.25 without much astig. you see very well up close without glasses. If you do surgery realise you would be trading near good vision for far good vision. Depending on your age to a lesser or greater degree. They will never "have it perfected" but it is getting safer.
Someting else to consider is someday we will need cataract surgery and with the new implants that are available it can be like lasik and maybe even better vision wise and since it needed to be done anyway covered by insurance. Surgery centers are in some cases removing the natural lens even though it isnt cloudy and replacing it with and implant that has a bifocal or accomodating technology. They are a little ways off of "perfected" but getting closer. dean

46. I now have lineless trifocals, the up close was way worse than I thought it was, yet due to trifocals I often take them off to read thought its getting harder without glasses.

Near vision is much more important in iron sight shooting. You don't have to see much of the target but you have to see the irons.

Jeff

I am 44 so I feeel your pain!! What do you wear to shoot irons?

appx - 1.75 with marked astigmatism correction, knobloch shooting lenses, variable blinder on the off eye, and either a medium orange, medium green or clear lense. Adjust depth of field by the rear aperture size on a hooded aperture.

Focus for service rifle MUST fall clearly on the front post of the AR15.

PS the above was figured out by borrowing the lenses and putting them in front of the rear sight on a 600 yard range, AFTER being tested for clarity in the shop and brinign the rifle along to show the focal length required. Took maybe 4 lenses either side of what looked best in shop...

Thats kind of what I was thinking. A little under minused power to help on the sights without blurring the distance to much.

so... your opinion I THINK I'm reading, says leave well enough alone for now RE my eyes right? trade offs not worth it at this point.

Dr Kenneth Kenyon the guy who brought the surgery here from Canada has a big practice in Dartmouth, MA. I went to see him with 2 friends about 15 years ago. Both of them had the surgery and haven't regretted it for a second. He looked at me and told me I was an ideal candidate. I have an easy script that hasn't changed since I was 8 years old. He did mention, however that my pupils are 7 1/2 mm and he warns everyone over 6mm that they may see halos around lights at night from the procedure. That put out my fire pretty quick. I can read every line on the eye chart, right down to the 20/10 with my glasses. Why would I want to take a chance with my eyes.

I got them examined yesterday and, as always, the script is the same, so I mentioned lasik surgery. I told the doc I looked into it once, but the guy was $4,000 and gave me a warning of possible night vision issues. The doc said that you should choose your lasik doctor like you would choose a heart surgeon. Find the best, money is no object, and take their advice and warnings if there are any seriously.

One thing I have heard over and over is that being nearsighted prolongs the length of time that a person can go without needing reading glasses. Fixing nearsighted vision with lasik will make it necessary to use reading glasses sooner. The average age, I've been told is around 35. With shooting, I'd find that to be an issue. Your eyes are constantly adjusting focus. Close to far. Back and forth. As we age, the muscles slow down and we lose our ability to do this. Sighting a gun requires going from rear sight to front to target. Probably many many times subconsciously and weakening focusing muscles would make this more difficult. Resting your eyes and not straining. Overdoing it is a problem. The doc told me that he's seen pilots 30 years old whose eyes are fried. Straining hours a day, day after day. Vision goes away fast.

Jeff,

I have done my own visiting with couple of doctors and got the same message that rob p did: I am not that great a candidate, even though I've been mypopic since around 10 years old--and I'm now 58.

My precription has changed since then, but I have very little astigmatism and could read fine until 46. Then I went to lineless trifocals and have been fine, even with irons. The only adjustment I've made is to lean my head back a little with handgun irons.

But if things get worse, I'll be a candidate.

Rost, As I see it you would have very little or nothing to gain for open sight performane. Other than you wouldnt need the lens to help you see the sights. It sounds like you have it optimised using the correct lens powers. You could attempt to get that corrected into your eye with lasik but then you would not have great distance/driving/night vision in that eye without a small rx in a pair of glasses. You would loose quite a bit of near vision focus without correction also as they would be removing some of your nearsightedness.
Now on the plus side you would gain quite a bit of distane clarity compaired to your vision now without glasses.
Bottom line is for real life vision you would probably want your dominate eye focused at far distance and maybe your other eye at far distance as well. If done that way your reading near vision and shooting irons vision would need correction. If you left your nondominant eye focused in [near] somewhat that would help your near but you would give up true binocular vision at distance and near without the help of correction to even them back out. How important is binocularity for distance and near? That all depends on who you talk to some of my patients feel the have great near and distance vision with the one eye near and one far and others are almost sick to their stomachs. Before you should consider monovision [one near and one far] you should try it in a contact lens and give it a real world trial.

Dude, you need to really rethink this. This is NOT an area where you want to go cheap, the wal-mart approach isn't the right one to take when you're dealing with your eyes.

Four years ago my wife had lasik surgery. When she went into it her vision was 20/530, the next day it was 20/15. She giggled uncontrollably for a week afterwards, just walking around marveling at being able to see well for the first time since she was four years old. Her best friend had it done at around the same time my wife did but she went to the local $495 hack, the result was that she had some problems and still has to wear glasses. I did a lot of research and located one of the best lasik doctors in the country several hundred miles away. I never asked what it would cost nor did I care, I just told my wife to write a check for it. Later my wife told me kind of sheepishly that her lasik cost twice what her friend Bobbi's did, I told here that I didn't care, if it were me having the surgery I wouldn't cheap out and I'm wasn't going to with her either.

The comment on choosing your lasik doctor as carefully as your heart doctor is spot one. You've only got one set of eyes, be VERY careful who you let work on them. I'm as cheap as anyone out there but this is one area where you don't want to skimp.

Seems like solid advice. Much appreciated from all.

Jeff

just noticed this topic.....

question:

the surgery would 'optimize' the eye's lens and acuity, just as contacts or spectacles, for near or far (or at front sight), but would have no effect on accomodation since the lens has lost elasticity with age????

thanks.

I had it done. My mistake was correcting my right eye (my dominant eye) for far sight clarity (20-15). Now I can't focus the front site blade. It's blurry and the the bulls eye is crystal clear. I should have done my left eye for far sight clarity, and left my right eye natural, for up close clarity. Nevertheless, other than shooting, it is the best decision I have ever made. No more squinting. $1,800 with the "best" ophthalmologist in Oklahoma City.

I would THINK, but not certain, that you could correct the front sight vision with glasses just used when shooting.

I had good enough 25 yard vision with glasses, that I could see the X clearly in the pistol rapid fire center... that was a disaster, so I just took my glasses IE RX off, and shot without RX but clear lense... could focus front pistol sight that way and target was a big blurr. Shot much better.

The surgery would reshape the cornea to focus the light coming into the eye for distance or near and get rid of astigmatism if that was present also. The surgery has no effect on the lens inside the eye that when we are younger has the ability to change shape and focus at near.
In my past post I was trying to say that the cornea could be reshaped to focus light coming into the eye at the distance of the front sight but then it would only be fair at best for distance vision. dean

There are a couple of things out there not mentioned so far that might of interest and speak to Mr Bill's question;
1) Dave Crandall's Zone Plate Diffraction hold some promise to bring focus to multiple planes. It's current available only for a Service Rifle application (since it's us knuckle draggers that complain loudest about losing the post).
http://www.accurateshooter.com/optics/microsight-technology-for-iron-sights/

2) There are investigational procedures out there based on the work by Schachr who says that Presbyopia is not entirely explained by the stiffening of the lens. The growth of the lens over one's lifetime and the resultant loss of tension in the ciliary muscles are more to blame for loss of accomodation (ability to change focus) according to Schachar. I haven't followed whether this class of procedure called SRP (Surgical Reversal of Presbyopia) were ultimately approved.

3) Maybe eyeguy can speak to this one, but I've heard there's now a flexible implantable lens that allows a degree of accommodation. Is this true?