The study had 8 people where the surgery caused "very" or "extremely" bothersome visual problems, and 4 people reporting difficulty performing activities due to these; I guess those are included in the 6 dissatisfied people.

Anecdata follows:

After LASIK my wife complained for months about seeing a halo around street lights at night time, until I convinced her, that with my then nearly perfect vision I also see them depending on how tired I am.

Before that she believed they were caused by the surgery, so might have responded "slightly dissatisfied" on the survey.

She probably never saw the halos before it, because her vision would simply blur them out together with everything else. Or simply never paid attention.

Is there any info on where they got the procedure? From what I understand, LASIK is quite reasonably safe, as long as you don't goto a place advertising "SUPER SUPER CHEAP LASIK ONE EYE FREE" etc. You get what you pay for.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if actually those are from cheap doctors.

You've got two replies reasonably arguing with the basis of your post, but it's important to keep in mind something more fundamental, even if we take your overall argument as given to start with:

>I wouldn't be surprised at all if actually those are from cheap doctors.

Even if this was completely true, the ease or difficulty of a medical treatment is a fundamental part of that treatment. If a treatment is simply incredibly hard for humans to perform effectively and carries risk of significant irreversible damage, that is a very different treatment in practice than one that is trivial and/or with minimal/temporary downsides even if it goes wrong. It's like with medicines themselves, where there is the concept of a "therapeutic index", the ratio between the minimum effective dose and a lethal dose. Some medicines have wide indexes, up to the point where it's essentially impossible to overdose (raw matter effects would hit first). These are fine to just have offered OTC for self-medication. Others, including very valuable ones, can have extremely narrow windows and thus require specialist prescription and ongoing monitoring/adjustment, up to and including only for use in a hospital.

Allowing "cheap" (inexperienced? unskilled? incorrect training?) practitioners to perform LASIK was itself a medical choice. Current training/licensing regimes are an inextricable part of the LASIK procedure, and if in practice there have been significant adverse results that should still be reviewed. It wouldn't have to mean banning the procedure entirely, but if it's a lot more dangerous than originally assessed the how|who|where of its performance might need refinement. "Caveat emptor lol" isn't how a good medical system is run.

Speculating like this is useless and generally counterproductive. It’s just a way of stating your internal biases, it’s best to recognize that bias and consider how that impacts your perception.

For example, you could say, “I’d like to think these failures are a result of lack of skill or experience on the part or the doctor, careless errors, or perhaps poorly maintained tools/equipment, and not a fundamental issue with the procedure itself which could effect even skilled and diligent practitioners. I wonder if the study accounted for the experience level of the practitioner?”

It's not so much the cost, as the amount of experience a given doctor has. You may be surprised to find that some of the cheaper options are safer because of the increased experience. Skill is an entirely different factor to consider, again not associated with pricing.

Given how much sugar the many people take in, it can really effect one's eyesight as metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes escalates. Overweight people and diabetics without strict controls should generally not consider something like LASIK.

Disclaimer, I'm a fat guy and t2d, this is practical not meant to be offensive.