If I am nervous will this be a problem?

Sometimes nothing can prevent a little nerves. 

And the majority of the time you wouldn’t want to. A little bit of adrenaline and anxiety keep us on our toes, help us through sticky situations, and have even been shown to help us perform at our best—think of athletes beating their PB’s on competition day.

But there are times when nerves are far from helpful, particularly when they appear in droves. Think of a first date, characterised by sweaty palms, peculiar behaviour, and awkward silences.

There are preventative steps you can take to help avoid these scenarios, but sometimes there’s nothing you can do but embrace them. Likewise with Laser Eye Surgery, you can do all the research and preparation you want, but come the day of the procedure the butterflies in your stomach may still be flapping around.

You’ll be forgiven for thinking that having the jitters when you’re about to go in for an extremely precise procedure on your eyes is bound to spell disaster. But with millions of surgeries having been carried out around the world, the procedure, technology, and laser eye surgeons have all grown to accommodate for such eventualities.

Systems in place to manage nerves

Some of those such eventualities which can’t be avoided include eye movement, blinking, coughing, and sneezing.

Let’s take eye movement as an example as it’s inevitable everyone will experience it. In fact, about 100 times every second the eyes make small involuntary movements known as saccadic movements.

As the eye continues to make these movements throughout the Laser Eye Surgery procedure, eye tracking systems are in place to track their position and precisely guide the placement of the laser pulses.

If at any moment for some reason the eye becomes misaligned, the tracking system responds, gathering data on the movement of the eye within one hundredth of a second and pausing the treatment or adjusting to suit.

So whatever happens during Laser Eye Surgery, whether you get the shakes, are blinking rapidly or can’t stop coughing, the results will not be affected.

If you are still a tad worried and would like to calm your nerves, there’s no better way to reduce them than reading testimonials of past patients and finding out more about the surgery. And of course, you can always get in touch with one of our friendly Patient Care Coordinators who’d be more than happy to have chat with you.

Read our Laser Eye Surgery testimonials on independent review site Trustpilot.

If you’d like to book a consultation at London Vision Clinic, or find out more about how you can calm your nerves prior to the procedure, leave us a comment or give us a call us on 020 7224 1005.

For 2017, we have updated this article to ‘Quick guide: Laser Eye Surgery and anxiety’