Laser Eye Surgery Forum

Can people with OCD still receive laser eye treatment?

Is it true that some surgeons/clinics will not offer laser eye treatment to patients who have obsessive cumpulsive disorder (OCD)? Do you need to disclose this to the clinic or can you get by without mentioning it?

It is true that assessment of personality comes into the consultation process, including conditions such as OCD. The reason is that experience has shown that patients with some psychological conditions can be very, very unhappy after laser eye surgery, despite getting an excellent vision result. One example, which most surgeons have seen, is a patient obsessing on the difference in vision between the two eyes, eg. one eye sees 20/20 and the other is even better at 20/16. Both eyes have normal vision but the patient can find it hard to live with the fact that the eyes are not the same. This led to the concept of not 20/20 but 20/Happy, which are not always the same thing. So in the patients own interests a clinic or doctor may suggest that laser eye surgery is not necessarily a good idea, although it can often be difficult to convey this understanding.