I get asked constantly why I haven't done LASIK yet. My response, which is usually met with incredulous eyes, is that I find it too risky. Starbursts and halos

I get asked constantly why I haven't done LASIK yet. My response, which is usually met with incredulous eyes, is that I find it too risky. Starbursts and halos are bad enough, but some people do not get them. And halos can be mitigated to some extent, you can just avoid performing the procedure if pre-surgery exams find out that your pupil is too big. Not sure if starbursts can be avoided. It must suck if your job involves staring at a screen all day (as mine does). What is more concerning is the damage to the cornea. First, there is dry eyes. It's not a question if you are going to get dry eyes or not, is how much and if it will be enough to still maintain sufficient lubrication. The nerves are damaged when the flap is created, not all return. And that is serious, people have committed suicide over dry eyes. Then there's the flap. The fact that a doctor can lift the flap again years after the procedure is very concerning. The cornea has a complex fibrous structure that never heals after the flap is created. You just have to hope that you are not subject to strong G forces. Or trauma, more generally. At least the pre-surgery exam battery is complete enough nowadays that we can predict ablating too much of the cornea so that the eye's structural integrity is no longer compromised. This was at the expense of a few early adopters, though. There is also the question of how the operated eye is going to age. There is just not enough data. If issues arise, these are usually blamed on older equipment. "Oh, that was a Nth generation Laser, it [did not have enough resolution, did not create the flap, was not wavefront, whatever]". Well then, when is the tech going to be "enough"? Last I checked, the resolution still wasn't too great. The cornea would look like the surface of the Moon under a microscope. If I decide to do it eventually, it will be a LASEK. At least there won't be flap-related issues. A few weeks recovering time is nothing if it means avoiding entire classes of issues for the rest of my life.