Where is the best place in the world to have Laser Eye Surgery?!

Where is the best place in the world to have Laser Eye Surgery?

I am interested in the safest and most consistent results.
I am long-sighted, have been since childhood, so it's not age-related.
Any idea of costs?
I live in Spain but am willing to travel.

The BEST place to have eye surgery done is....

well, it depends.

It depends on your refractive error. If you have a HIGH refractive error, such as a -9.00 or a +5.00 or?, you may NOT want to have the usual type of refractive surgery.

If you are over 40, you may NOT want to have usual refractive surgery as you are entering the presbyopia ages where your lens has grown to a size that it's harder to bend, it's closer to the muscles so they have to contract more just to tighten the little zonule fibers to start to bend the lens, the center of the lens is now getting sclerotic or hard, so it's not going to bend at all. There's actually a surgery where the sclera is thinned by YAG laser, around the base of the iris, where the cornea and white part meet,. This allows the pressure inside the eye to push out, which tightens up the zonules (little ropes that hold the lens in place), so that they are no longer presbyopic. (don't want to get hit in the eye after this surgery.)

Some people recommend getting a refractive lensectomy and intraocular lens.

This is the same as cataract surgery,
without the cataract.

THIS they KNOW how to do, how to calculate the measurements, have done millions and millions over the world, have new implants and very efficient lens removal techniques....

and they do not mess around with the cornea, the surface of which has to deal with all those environmental problems such as dust and allergens and pollens and....

Then there's the newer surgery where instead of reshaping the cornea by destroying a fine lenticular area,

but instead place within the center of the cornea, a lens, a very small, very thin insert. It's very hard to pick up even with another eye doctor, and they work nicely. But, again, it is the cornea.

Then there's photo-refractive treatments where they calculate the amount of error to correct with YOUR eye, and then do a series of small 'burns' which contract the collagen and change the shape of the cornea. They're getting better at this but it's still fairly 'new'. Used with hyperopia and astigmatism.

The most physiological way is the removal of the lens and replace the lens with an implant.

BUT, this new eye will be focused at ONE distance...unless you get one of the newer multifocal lenses...but those have problems with glare and shadow images and....

So with an implant and an old (>40) eye, you'd set it up so that that eye sees just at distance and you use bifocals for near. OR just near, and forget far, the other eye can be Rx'd for far..

Those are decisions you should make with someone who lives nearby. You might consider an ophthalmologist who has been out of training for 5 years+ or so and who doesn't run a mill, but does do a lot of cataract surgery and also the refractive LASEK or LASIK or wavefront or? surgeries.

Cornea specialists do these well.

and...if you are highly hyperopic or myopic, get a good retina exam first. It's so much easier to treat peripheral retinal problems early, before they become emergencies, than treating an eye with a retinal tear or detachment that possibly could have been avoided before an elective refractive procedure...if there are any problems at all.

Costs? Figure about $3000 or so per eye. That's a fairly fair price. Don't get the do one eye, get one eye free thing, or just 14 people get free eye exams if they call within the next 30 minutes, or a really nice toaster oven just for coming in.