The reason most people who have surgery come to us is very simple: 1. They want to have a safe surgical experience. We don't cut corners. We don't use cheap equipment. We don't skimp on maintenance of the equipment. We won't perform surgery on you unless we would lay there in your place in the same circumstance. 2. Our visual outcomes are very, very good. Why? Because we compulsively insist that data gathering on each of our patients is consistent, and must meet a very high standard before it is considered accurate enough to use in calculating a treatment plan. We further insist on seeing our patients back in follow-up ourselves so we know the desired outcomes are being achieved. We can give patients accurate odds of a visual outcome based on previous patient experience and then each individual can decide if those odds are adequate for them to proceed with surgery. 3. We do all we can to earn and maintain the trust of those who honor us by allowing us to do their surgery. The relationship between a patient and doctor is completely different than between a consumer and a provider. Those that sell laser vision correction surgery as a commodity, and those who shop for it as such deserve each other. We are blessed to be able to choose to do surgery for those people we feel are good candidates. We feel no compulsion to push anyone to do laser surgery. We have always tried to honestly tell patients if we think they are good candidates for surgery after we get to know them better. We will continue to put the patient's interests first when it comes to laser surgery decisions.   [less]

The laser vision correction surgeons at our practice sit down with each patient and examine them as well as get to know them from the very beginning (as detailed in question “Am I a good candidate for laser vision correction and how does your evaluation differ from free evaluations?”). It is important to find out how a patient spends their day visually and what their particular visual needs may be (such as what various focal distances they work at). We also find out how patients spend their leisure time and address those specific visual needs as well. It is very important to explore each patient's expectations for laser vision correction surgery. If expectations are unrealistic or unreasonable then an honest discussion needs to occur explaining what can be achieved with laser vision correction for that particular person. The process of caring for patients and educating people takes time and effort as well as skill. I believe when you lay down and look up at the blinking red target light of the laser prior to surgery, you should know long before that moment that your surgeon's motivation for performing your surgery is that they want to help you see well and live a better life with laser vision correction surgery. How can a patient trust that the doctor doing their surgery really has their best interest first and foremost in mind if they meet the surgeon for the first time while they are preparing to lay under the laser? How does that surgeon know you specifically or what you need? I would never trust anyone with my sight until I had investigated them thoroughly, had them examine me thoroughly, and sat and talked to them face to face to see if they are competent, honest and sincere. You will have those opportunities and choices when you see us at Griffin & Reed Eye Care   [less]

Read the fine print. There is a reason the print is small. Many of the prices offered at these centers are limited as indicated in the fine print. Question every asterisk. What is being hidden? Most laser vision correction providers who advertise a low price have a tiered pricing system where every little thing costs more. Typically they also don't utilize the best available equipment to perform the best treatment for LASIK in order to achieve reduced operating costs. We find this to be unacceptable. The average price at these centers who advertise an initial low fee is usually between $1,800 and $1,900 per eye.   [less]

We consider retreatment on the same priority basis as primary treatments: • Is it safe to retreat? • Are we unreasonably risking what we have gained in the original treatment? If we can achieve a bit better for our patients safely, then why not? They came to us in the first place because they trusted us to do our best for them. We do not have a 20/40 or 20/30 waiver in our practice. Most of the patients that undergo a retreatment in our office have better than 20/40 vision. In most high volume laser vision correction centers, patients are asked to sign a 20/40 or 20/30 waiver with their other paperwork. Unfortunately, most patients don't realize they have even signed this type of waiver so please be careful if you are asked to sign something like this prior to your laser vision correction surgery. A 20/40 or 20/30 waiver stipulates that even if you are best corrected with glasses or contacts to 20/20 before surgery, and the best you achieve after surgery is 20/40 or20/30 without glasses or contact lenses, then you will not be eligible for an enhancement or touchup. You will be told that 20/40 or 20/30 is an acceptable outcome and the risk of retreatment is too great with 20/40 or 20/30 vision. However, these same centers would be willing to treat a patient with 20/40 or 20/30 vision if they were a new, paying patient. This same 20/40 or 20/30 is apparently bad enough to treat if you are paying for the treatment, but not bad enough to treat if the surgeon is not getting paid to retreat you. The difference in this philosophy about who is eligible for a retreatment can cause confusion for patients when they are comparing retreatment rates between laser vision correction surgeons. Surgeons may appear to have an artificially low retreat rate if their requirements for a retreatment are so strict that few patients are bad enough to qualify. However, they may have a large group of patients who are visually challenged by 20/30-20/40 vision. On the other hand, if you were to look at the retreatments we do at Griffin and Reed Eye Care for those who are 20/40 or worse, our retreatment rate would be less than 1% of all our patients. Our overall retreatment rate is between 1% and 10% depending on the level of the patient's preoperative correction. Very high corrections tend to show more regression after surgery and therefore have a slightly higher rate of retreatment than the majority of patients with more normal corrections. Be careful when comparing retreatment rates that you know the standard by which to compare. Also, when a surgeon boasts of number of surgeries done they often include the retreatments as "eyes treated". Having a high retreat rate pads the statistics, but speaks poorly for visual outcomes. Most reputable laser vision correction surgeons don't charge patients for retreatments. The justifiable exception to this is the minimal royalty fee enforced by the laser manufacturers for encrypted key cards to operate the laser (usually about $150.00 per card - one card will treat one eye).   [less]

We are pleased that other doctors realize the superior treatment performed by a Visx Laser. One detail to note is that the Visx Star S4, is not the same as a Visx Star S4 IR (this is explained in further detail in question “What brand of laser do you use and why do you use that brand?”). However, the way the Visx Star S4 IR laser is programmed makes all the difference in regard to your outcome even if the laser is the same model. Our proprietary programming method increases the probability from about 65% to about 98% that you will get the outcome your desire as discussed in question “How does your doctor determine how to program the laser for my laser vision correction?”. Please realize that one of the biggest risks in having LASIK is when the flap is made prior to the laser treatment. Even if the surgeon uses the most advanced Visx Laser, the Visx Star S4 IR Laser but doesn't use the German engineered Hansatome Microkeratome to make the corneal flap then you only have part of the equation solved. Please see question “What microkeratome do you use and why do you use that brand? “ for further explanation of why we choose to only use the Hansatome Microkeratome.   [less]

We use a Visx Star S4 IR with active track, CustomVue (Wavefront), and Iris Registration that is permanently installed in our office. The "IR" stands for Iris Registration. This technology not only identifies the iris but also rotates the treatment to match any iris rotation that may have occurred. Since the eye is known to cyclorotate during surgery, this can be a benefit, especially in cases of high astigmatism or Wavefront treatment due to significant irregularities in your cornea. This is the state of the art system available from Visx. We do not cut corners by using cheaper lasers or skimping on maintenance to pad a profit margin at the potential expense of our trusting patients. Visx is the company that started building excimer lasers for human laser vision correction back in 1986. There are several generations of Visx Lasers available. It is the most widely used laser system worldwide. About 59% of the surgeons doing laser vision correction use one of the Visx models for treating patients. The other lasers which are currently popular are the Alcon Ladarwave used by 19% of surgeons, the Bausch and Lomb Laser - 11%, the Wavelight Laser - 4%, and the Nidek Laser - 4%. The reason I prefer Visx is that I feel it gives the best correction for all combinations of corrections. That is nearsightedness, farsightedness, and astigmatism in any combination is best served by treating with a Visx Star S4 IR Laser. Visx also enjoys the widest approval for various combinations of Wavefront or custom treatments. Visx was the true pioneer of this industry investing hundreds of millions of dollars and many years to develop and perfect the technology we use today. Many of the other lasers on the market actually can cause night vision issues and halos due to poor technology. Bottom line is this, if I'm lying under it or putting my family under a laser for vision correction, it is going to be a Visx Star S4 IR. We invite you to visit visx.com for additional information. Please also see question “What technology do you use for surgery?”.   [less]

The way the laser is programmed has an extreme impact on your outcome. Many laser vision correction surgeons in the United States use what has been termed the "plug and play" method. The "plug and play" method is when a surgeon enters a glasses prescription into the excimer laser's computer and lets the laser do the calculations for them. When a surgeon uses this method to treat patients with a prescription between +4.00 to -6.00 (the majority of patients fall into this range), there is usually a 65% - 75% chance you will achieve 20/25 or better vision. We have been tracking our data meticulously since becoming the first to offer laser vision correction to our patients on the West coast and as a result, our surgeons developed the propriety program we use to program our Visx Star S4 IR Laser yielding superior surgical outcomes. We meticulously track our post-operative data and use that information to continually evaluate our program in order to offer our patients the best possible outcome from their laser vision correction surgery experience. Our surgeons treating the same patient base mentioned above while using our proprietary program to enter our patient's data for their laser vision correction surgery will result in a 98% chance you will achieve 20/20 or no worse than 20/25 vision with one treatment. You have a higher probability of getting the result you desire at our practice because of that compulsive data evaluation and proprietary laser programming. A surgeon may claim to have performed tens of thousands of procedures but the most important question is, "What are the visual outcomes of those tens of thousands of patients?" The number of eyes a surgeon has treated means very little if the visual outcomes of most of those is, "20 / mediocre", vision. Most doctors probably won't be able to tell you their visual outcomes or they may quote national statistics since the majority do not track their post-operative data. We have no trouble with those who charge less for laser vision correction surgery, they know what their services are worth. If you pay a low price but don't achieve the outcome you desire, you still paid too much. We believe that the bitterness of poor quality will remain long after the sweetness of a lower price is forgotten.   [less]

We insist on using the German engineered Hansatome Microkeratome instrument to make the flap for the LASIK treatment. If we used the next best instrument, we could save tens of thousands of dollars per year. However, by using the next best instrument, we would be placing our patients at risk since the next best instrument has an unacceptable failure rate. Poor design and poor engineering will lead to malfunction even in the hands of experienced surgeons. The next best instrument has a malfunction rate of around 1 in every 200 treatments due to design or engineering flaws. A malfunction could lead to a minor problem or could be so serious as to cause potential blindness. We find this to be unacceptable. We believe the German engineered Hansatome to be the safest microkeratome available. We continually evaluate new competitors to the Hansatome Microkeratome but have yet to find anything as good or better than the Hansatome. Bottom Line, if there was something better, we would be using it.  [less]

We only perform as many as we can do safely and take care of before AND after surgery. We usually perform laser vision correction surgery two days a week and spend the remainder of our time seeing patients for evaluations for laser vision correction or follow-up after surgery. On a busy surgery day we average about twenty patient surgeries. The efficiency of our surgery team is superb. By the time patients arrive for surgery, all the preparation work is finished and we follow a specific process to make sure everything is perfect for each patient's surgery. In a typical month we will perform an average of about 150-200 laser vision correction procedures on new patients. We insist on seeing and caring for our patients both pre and post-operatively so we only do as many patient surgeries as we can care for appropriately. As previously mentioned, a surgeon may claim to have performed tens of thousands of procedures but the most important question is, "What are the visual outcomes of those tens of thousands of patients?" The number of eyes a surgeon has treated means very little if the visual outcomes of most of those is, "20 / mediocre", vision.   [less]

We have been doing laser surgery for vision correction since 1994. Since that time we have done well over 15,000 surgeries. We spend our time and resources tracking our outcomes more than our number of surgeries. How people see after surgery is much more important to me than trying to see how many people we can run through surgery.  [less]