A patient in my Ventura office who drives an hour to work from Oxnard every day asked me how modern LASIK affects night driving compared to older generations of LASIK. A study was published this month in the Journal of Cataract and Refractive Surgery that looked at how three different latest generation lasers from three different manufacturers to collectively see how they performed overall based on patient-reported evaluations of their vision. A total of 718 cases of LASIK using one of these three lasers were evaluated by reviewing FDA data. Patients had their LASIK performed either with the VISX S4IR, Allegretto Contura, or NIDEK CADz laser. The first is a wavefront guided laser system whereas the other two use topographically guided LASIK. At one year after LASIK, there was overall a 29% reduction in problems driving at night compared to before surgery with glasses or contacts.In the review, moderate to severe symptoms for light sensitivity was found to be reduced by 9% compared to before surgery, glare was reduced by 12%, and halos were reduced by 6% at 12 months after LASIK. The authors concluded, “Analysis of the FDA data shows that modern lasers have significantly improved patient-reported visual outcomes after LASIK.”