Eye surgery yields better vision than 20/20

Question

First laser eye op to give patients 'super-vision' - with better than 20/20 eyesight after surgery

Answer 1

It is difficult to say whether this is real. The article does provide a story of the surgery succeeding, it doesn't have any actual records of it's trials and results. In addition, the only other article I could find online about this story was a direct copy paste of this article, and the credibility of this website is doubtful given the copious amount of ads plastered all over the article.

Comments

How do you rate the claim? True? False? Misleading? Always mention your rating in-text and select a rating. Also, include sources. Review academic or media articles or research online and see if you can find more information than what was provided by the poster. Thanks!

Answer 2

The central claim of the piece, being a new laser eye surgery that can give patients ‘super vision’, is misleading due to the overstated stats cited in the article surrounding the success rates of the surgery. Daily mail cites that,

“Trials found it had a 100 per cent success rate in achieving 20/20 or 'normal vision', stopping the need for glasses.” 

There is no mention of where the Daily Mail got this information, and it is refuted by the FDA’s PROWL trials, which reported satisfaction rates of about 95% and a range of complications associated with the surgery. You can find more information about the potential risks of Lasik here.

Answer 3

This standpoint is extremely exaggerated and misleading. While LASIK can provide significantly clearer vision, it does not give you "super-vision". In an article by NVISION, they show how LASIK surgery improves vision by 1-2 feet more than the average individual with 20/20 vision. This is by no means "super-vision" since a surgery like this can significantly improve one section of the eye but in turn will damage another. In the NVISION article, they say "Because of overcorrection, some people can have one part of their vision improved markedly and yet have another area become compromised."

Answer 4

Link to original article:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-14055153/First-laser-eye-op-patients-super-vision-better-20-20-eyesight-surgery.html

First off, Daily Mail isn’t on News Detective’s trusted sources list, so we need to be skeptical of this article. The author, Kate Pickles, has a good looking LinkedIn profile with nearly 20 years of Journalism experience. This is promising, but most of the information in the article is centered on a patient story rather than data. For one, the article doesn’t actually cite any sources besides an interview with the surgery company itself. However, after some digging I found a study by the National Institute of Health that had similar stats to the article regarding ray-tracing Lasik surgery. NIH is a trusted source, and one stat that they both cited is that “half the eyes achieved ≥20/12.5 UDVA and 8% achieved 20/10” after the surgery. Although the Daily Mail article is written a bit sensationally, it is backed up by some real facts. It is important to clarify that this is in treatment of myopia. (nearsightedness) This wasn’t very clear in the Daily Mail article, which may lead you to believe that the surgery can treat all eye problems with amazing results. Also, the main claim is a bit misleading in saying this is the “first laser eye op” to give patients better than 20/20 vision, but I found another NIH study published in 2019, five years before the Daily Mail article, that mentions 20/10 vision as a result of lasik surgery. Overall, this article has some factual information but the title is too sensationalized and inaccurate to say it is 100% true.

Sources: 

https://www.focusclinics.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kate-pickles-815b1213a/details/experience/

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4302464/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37595291/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30819561/

Answer 5

The claim that "Eye surgery yields better vision than 20/20," can be true but it does depend on the person. LASIK and similar surgeries can definitely improve vision, they don’t necessarily guarantee vision better than 20/20. 20/20 vision is normal, this means you can see clearly at 20 feet away what a person with normal vision can see. Some people may have better than 20/20 vision, but that's not necessarily normal for everyone who gets surgery. An article I found said that LASIK surgery has a high success rate, with many people gaining 20/25 vision or better, but exceeding 20/20 vision is super rare. Another source, the Mayo Clinic, talks about how while vision surgeries can improve your eyesight, the goal is often to get patients to 20/25 or 20/40, which is still considered really good vision. However, the claim might also be trying to say that in the situation where some people could have 20/15 vision after surgery, which is better than 20/20, but this is not a guarantee for everyone. While the idea that eye surgery can provide better than 20/20 vision is sometimes true for a few people, it is not guaranteed and should not be taken as a universal idea.

Sources:

• American Academy of Ophthalmology (https://www.aao.org)

• Mayo Clinic (https://www.mayoclinic.org)