Will Laser Eye Surgery give me 20/20 vision?

This is the aim! When you finally decide to have laser eye surgery, your eye sight may be very poor, it may only be slightly less than good, but it must have been stable, at the same prescription at least for the past 2 years. The ideal outcome of the surgery is to correct your vision so that you no longer need glasses or contacts, as if your vision had never deteriorated!

With all corrective eye procedures the best possible outcome is to restore your vision to 6/6, which is also known as ‘20/20’. This number is how good your vision is, basically meaning that you can see at 20 metres what a normal person can. As your eyesight gets worse, this number falls. Eye surgery is used to correct this problem by reshaping your cornea. If all goes to plan and your cornea is corrected well you will get ’20/20’ vision.


Unfortunately in some cases the outcome of surgery isn’t as good as would have been hoped for. There is the chance that your vision will be over or under corrected and you will still have to wear glasses. You may also get ‘20/20’ vision but experience problems such as glare and starbursts.

The best way to make sure you get the best possible results is to have eye surgery that is guided by the new scanning procedures such as wavefront. These scan your cornea before the operation and produce a map, showing your ophthalmologist where to remove corneal tissue to precisely correct your vision.

Read more about the benefits of laser eye surgery, the risks of laser eye surgery and the side effects of laser eye surgery.