A patient from Oxnard who was considering a career in the Air Force as a pilot recently asked me about laser vision correction and being a pilot. I told him the story I had just read about Yuri McKee, M.D., a flight surgeon who had undergone PRK laser eye surgery and said it “changed his life.” Dr. McKee was training to be a heart surgeon in the US Air Force when he was placed on active flight duty as a flight surgeon. Dr. McKee said that maintaining good contact lens hygiene was nearly impossible while being deployed, so he wore his glasses.  While flying in an F-15 as the flight surgeon, he had to turn his head to look backwards and found his vision was limited when looking far to the side by the edge of his glasses. Even more concerning, under the 9 G’s of force he underwent while flying in the military aircraft, the glasses dug so hard into the bridge of his nose that his goggles became stained with blood! Dr. McKee understood first hand why high performance pilots in the Air Force need to have excellent vision without glasses or contacts. Dr. McKee decided to undergo PRK in each eye and had an excellent result. Like so many patients, Dr. McKee said his final vision was actually better than it had been with glasses or contacts and flying jets “was a whole new world.” In fact, Dr. McKee was so impressed with the entire experience of undergoing laser vision correction with PRK that he switched careers and became an ophthalmologist instead of a heart surgeon. Dr. McKee recently described his experience in Ocular Surgery News.