Is LASIK Surgery Bad? Women Say They're Dealing With Complications Years After The Procedure

Fox 2 News meteorologist and mom-of-two Jessica Starr underwent the SMILE procedure – said to be "less invasive" than LASIK – to improve her eyesight on October 11, 2019. When she went back to work for the first time following the surgery, she burst into tears. Starr's husband, Dan Rose, was alarmed – his wife wasn't much of a crier.

Starr's vision kept getting blurry, and she had to use eyedrops every five minutes to clear it. She also had extreme sensitivity to light, which made working in the studio more difficult. Halos and starbursts from car headlights distracted her. Starr started documenting her struggles in video form.

"I don't know, I am kind of frustrated, upset, regret. I have a lot of emotions, a lot of feelings going on, I am really mad at myself for doing this. I don't know why – I was fine in contacts; glasses weren't that big of a deal. It was fine," Starr said. "I went and I wasted money – for what? For what? For nothing."

Two months after her SMILE surgery, Starr opted for assisted suicide. She left a long suicide note for her husband. "She wrote that because of the loss of vision, I can't be a mom, I can't be a wife, I can't work. I've lost every aspect of my life,'' her husband Dan Rose said.

Women Come Forward about LASIK Complications

Starr is not alone in this. An Australian-based woman named Erin Orchard opted for LASIK eye surgery in 2019. She started experiencing "excruciating and ongoing pain in both eyes" just days after the procedure and was later "diagnosed with neuropathic corneal pain." Five years later, Orchard is still living in intense pain and uses her platform to raise awareness of the possible complications of LASIK

Shan (@shanswanz) got LASIK surgery in October 2020 after being told she was a candidate for it. After the procedure, she began experiencing dry eye symptoms. Visine drops helped for a while and took away the redness from her eyes. In late 2022, Shan had to start using the eyedrops every day – fast forward to today, and they no longer provide relief.

Recently, she was told that she needed glasses, and her doctor dropped a bomb on her. "He started telling me about how my cornea is definitely thinner than what it's supposed to be."

"He said it's kinda looking like one of two options," Shan recalled. "Either I was never a candidate for LASIK in the first place, and they never should have allowed me to get that surgery because my cornea was too thin, or I was a candidate for LASIK, but when they use the laser to laser off your cornea, they took too much, and it made my cornea too thin.”

There are other videos of women on social media stating how they still have complications years later from LASIK, the most common being dry eyes and pain. Lindsay Rae on TikTok said she's also had to deal with "recurring eye infections, red eyes, social anxiety, light sensitivity, expensive treatments, and impaired night driving."

Should You Still Get LASIK? 

Many people have reported positive results from LASIK, but every procedure comes with risks – it’s up to your doctor to decide if you’re a good candidate for LASIK, and if you are, you need to consider whether or not it’s worth it. According to the American Academy of Ophthalmology, research shows that serious complications from LASIK "are rare and that the majority of patients are happy with the results." At the same time, maybe we should consider the women trying to warn us about it. 

“Many of the long-term risks of surgery can be avoided by undergoing a thorough consultation with an experienced surgeon,” says board-certified opthalmologist and cornea specialist Jason N. Edmonds, M.D. “Not everyone is a good candidate for LASIK. Appropriate screening prior to surgery can identify patients [who] are at increased risk of complications.”

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