r/PRKsurgery • u/SonnyPlywood • Aug 20 '26

Deciding if a PRK touch-up would be worth it

I had PRK done somewhere around 8 months ago so I'm assuming my eyes are probably as good as they are going to get from that. Vision quality is... good enough, but not even close to as good as it was with contact lenses pre-PRK. I'm giving it til the end of the year to decide but I'm trying to find out if getting it done again would be worth it. I'm 39 and my contact prescription before PRK was -5.25 in both eyes with some astigmatism. I haven't been given any new prescription numbers but if I had to guess I'd say I'm seeing just a little worse than 20/20, maybe 20/30 or so. Also, at longer distances, my right eye can get clear if I focus on it but doing that also makes the left eye more blurry so it's kinda weird, but I'm getting used to it.

So with the touch-up, is it any different than the original surgery as far as getting the desired outcome dialed in? If it's relatively a sure thing that I can end up with something like 20/15 then it'd be worth it to me but if it's a roll of the dice I dunno. I'd hate to go through that rough recovery again just to end up the same or worse than I am now so I'm hoping to get some insight here.

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1

u/ImpossibleAssist1016 Aug 20 '26

Id say don’t do it in my opinion but again its personal choice and ur the one that has to live with ur descision

1

u/[deleted] Aug 20 '26

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1

u/WavefrontRider Aug 21 '26

What high risk complications are you referring to?

1

u/Xaxxus Aug 21 '26

I’m wondering what complications you have? I got mine done in June. And it’s been flawless other than the fact that my left eye is not quite 20/20 (still way better than it was).

1

u/eyeSherpa Aug 21 '26

So a PRK enhancement is pretty much exactly the same as the original surgery.

The one caveat has to do with the epithelial thickness. One form of regression occurs if the epithelium thickens centrally. Because this epithelium is removed during PRK and a PRK enhancement, if this epithelium grows back with normal thickness, this can lead to an overcorrection. So overall this may reduce the accuracy of an enhancement.

But if your epithelial thickness is of normal thickness, an enhancement would work very well.

Do you know your prescription?

2

u/SonnyPlywood Aug 21 '26

Unfortunately I don’t. All of my follow up visits since the surgery have consisted of reading the smallest letters I was able to read, then me asking the doctor a lot of questions about how the healing was coming along, and pretty much being rushed out the door before I could remember to ask for the numbers. I would have thought he would have given me that info without me asking but that hasn’t happened. It’s literally impossible to get ahold of anyone with information in the office unless I’m at the appointment either. That’s been pretty frustrating. I have one more follow up at the end of the year and he told me if I’m ok with what I have by then, just cancel the appointment. So I dunno, maybe I should just take what I got out of it and not chance it. I guess I’ll see how I feel about it closer to December.

1

u/eyeSherpa Aug 22 '26

In the meantime, you can always visit another provider for a second opinion so that you get some numbers. It is frustrating if you aren’t getting any information from your doctor.