Dr. Bindi & Dr. Furlong

My wife went to Dr. Bindi four years ago for a LASIK consultation. At that time, her eyes were still changing so she was declined as a potential LASIK candidate. She went back to see him last week for another consultation. This time, she was declared a candidate. They also had a $1000 off promotion. 

We also went to see Dr. Furlong at the recommendation of my wife's optometrist. Dr. Furlong was also the surgeon who did my cousin's eyes a while back. They offer VSP discount, however his price with discount is still $700 more than Dr. Bindi's. Bear in mind that we opted for the all-laser procedure.

 

After LASIK, we do not want to return to have an annual eye check. With TLC and Dr.Furlong, if you miss an eye appointment with one of their affiliated eye doctors, you may lose the lifetime guarantee! This TLC guarantee is rather weak if you analyze it. Dr. Bindi's lifetime guarantee is much better. He doesn't require an annual eye check at all.

Lifetime guarantees:  It’s better to have it than not. However, remember that only the physician can OK your enhancement request. Also, lifetime is for the lifetime of their business, which is true, but also for the viability of your cornea tissue. If you have thin corneas, chances are you may not be able to get too many enhancements even if you wanted to. Generally, after LASIK, if your cornea below the flap is around 300 microns, you are no longer a candidate for additional LASIK enhancements!

Update 12/30/11: Dr. Hyver also has a lifetime guarantee. The exception is that your sight must degrade by more than -1D and above 20/40. Also it precludes presbyopia. The presbyopia is a given since LASIK cannot fix presbyopia. However, most people would not have their vision degrade beyond -1D. This may be similar to the TLC guarantee.

Make sure you ask them to calculate how much left over of your cornea thickness after surgery. Most problems with ectasia had been due to thin cornea. My wife has an average 530 micron thickness, which is if you subtract 110 for the flap and 80 or so micron for the correction itself, she should have about 340 left which means about 40 micron is left for later correction. This is the reason I recommended that she choose PRK over LASIK. However, the longer recovery time plus the discomfort was too much for her. She chose LASIK instead. This is by far the most popular choice right now.

We initially leaned toward Dr. Bindi. He was initially extremely helpful in answering our questions via Emails. My wife prefers his lifetime guarantee better as well as only one consultation is required before the actual surgery. She doesn't like the exams. Superficially, this sounded better. However, if you dig down further, you will find that this is actually not optimal. I will detail the reason in a later post.

Dr. Bindi felt confident in his technology and based on the Yelp reviews, I assume there have not been any bad problems arising from his procedures. We believe the technologies are comparable for certain prescriptions. The more experienced surgeon should get better results with the technology he is more comfortable with. He also has the best intralase laser the iFS 150 which we liked. 

During our initial consultation, we asked him what's the difference between wavefront and custom LASIK. He said they are the same. Based on my research, this claim is strenuous at best. Wavefront-optimized is still based on your prescription, just like standard LASIK. However, it uses wavefront profiles to improve results. Custom LASIK actually uses customized measurements from  your eyes for the procedure. Strike one.

I continued to dig deeper and realized that there are subtle differences with the technologies. Before Christmas, we asked him a couple more difficult questions.

 A couple more questions. Can you tell me the size of my pupil and the thickness of my cornea? I read that wavefront-guided helps fix higher order aberrations. Do you use the allegro analyzer to determine if I have existing HOA that may require wavefront-guided. Do you offer that option if I require it?

He stopped replying to us after this question.  That’s too bad. Strike two.

The Laser Eye center website touts wavefront as the superior technology and links to studies of wavefront. If you read carefully at the studies, they are mostly for wavefront-guided studies. The 98% success rate in those studies is for the wavefront-guided VISX S4 and not the wavefront-optimized Allegretto Wave. Dr. Bindi does not offer wavefront-guided LASIK with the Allegretto or the VISX S4. It’s interesting that he would tout technology that he doesn’t even offer. Strike two and half?

Dr. Furlong stresses that he has better technology which was what prompted me to do further research. Had we not gone for a second opinion, we would have selected Dr. Bindi. Remember, every doctor will say his technology is better. It's up to you to sift through the information or misinformation.

During our second consultation with Dr. Furlong, my wife had a wavefront analysis done to her eyes. We asked for her report and it showed that her eyes had an HOA RMS error of .39 and .59. This means she has elevated higher order aberrations. Dr. Bindi's consultation does not test for this! Strike three.

We liked Dr. Bindi. Unfortunately, we will have to cross him off our list.