Questions to ask at the LASIK exam consult

How the consult actually goes

On exam day you'll spend an hour or two with technicians: corneal topography, pachymetry, wavefront, pupil measurement, tear film, a dilated fundus check. Then you'll sit with the surgeon. They'll have the scans in front of them, they'll have a recommendation, and they'll have a clinic full of other patients. You get ten to fifteen minutes.

Two things work against you. First, you're dilated — reading and writing are hard for a few hours. Second, you're a day or two from surgery in a foreign country and you want to be told it's fine. Both push you toward nodding along. The fix is simple: bring a written list, bring someone to take notes (or use your phone's voice memo, with permission), and ask the questions in the order below so the important ones come first.

If you've done a proper What to send with your LASIK inquiry pre-screen, most of what you'll hear confirms what you already know. The consult is where you find out if anything changed.

The ten questions, and what a good answer sounds like

Working through the list

1–3: candidacy and the numbers behind it

The first three questions are really one question asked three ways: does the exam support the plan? You are looking for the surgeon to reach for figures — corneal thickness in microns, your prescription in diopters, the shape of your topography — and to explain the procedure choice in terms of those figures. A surgeon who says "you're a great candidate" and moves on is either rushed or hasn't looked closely. A surgeon who says "your right cornea is a bit thinner, so I'd rather do PRK on that eye" has looked closely, even if it's not what you wanted to hear.

Write the numbers down. They go in your home follow-up folder and your optometrist will want them.

4–5: the equipment and the person

Colombian refractive clinics tend to be well equipped — the country's ophthalmology tradition runs back to Barraquer in Bogotá — but "well equipped" is a claim, and question 4 turns it into a fact you can check. The laser platform has a name. The flap method is femtosecond or it isn't. Question 5 is about the surgeon specifically, and it's fair game. Volume matters in refractive surgery, and any surgeon doing it seriously knows their own enhancement rate. Asking politely will not offend anyone competent.

6–7: the side effects you'll actually have

Dry eye and night-vision effects are the two things most likely to bother you in the first months. The good consult connects them to your results: your tear break-up time, your scotopic pupil size. If you have large pupils and a high prescription, you deserve to hear that halos may be more noticeable and may take longer to settle. That's not a reason not to proceed; it's a reason to be told.

8: the enhancement policy, again

You've read it in the quote and you'll see it in Reading a Colombian LASIK quote and in the consent form. Ask it a third time here, out loud, because the surgeon is the one who'll perform it. The specific version of the question for a travelling patient is: if I need an enhancement at month nine and I'm in Ohio, what happens? Reasonable answers include a reduced fee for a return trip, a referral arrangement, or a straightforward "you'd fly back, and the procedure is covered." Any of those is fine. "We'll figure it out" is not.

9: follow-up at home

This is the question surgeons who mostly treat locals sometimes forget to prepare for. You need a written schedule (day 1, week 1, month 1, month 3, month 6, month 12 is typical), a note on what each visit should check, and ideally a short letter to your home optometrist. The clinics we book with do this routinely. We cover the home side in Setting up LASIK follow-up care at home.

10: the cancellation question

Ask it last because it's slightly awkward and because the answer tells you a lot. A good surgeon has a list: any sign of infection, contact lenses worn inside the cut-off window (see When to stop contact lenses before LASIK), certain medications, a reading that shifted between scans, a patient who seems unsure. Hearing that list from the surgeon means they're prepared to say no, which is the person you want holding the laser. What to do if the answer to question 1 is "no" gets its own article: what happens if the exam says no.

What the surgeon will ask you

It's a two-way conversation, and the questions coming back at you are the ones your answers actually change the plan on. Have them ready.

• When did you last wear contact lenses, and what type? The honest date, to the day.
• What medications do you take, including anything from a dental or other appointment this trip? Everything, including over-the-counter.
• Any history of dry eye, eye infections, eye injury, or eye surgery? Even a stye last year.
• Any autoimmune or connective-tissue condition, diabetes, or pregnancy/breastfeeding? All affect candidacy or timing.
• Any family history of keratoconus? The one people forget to mention.
• What do you do for work and sport? Contact sports, dusty jobs, and screen-heavy work all shape the procedure choice and the post-op plan.
• What do you want from this? Not a trick question. "Driving without glasses" and "perfect night vision for astrophotography" lead to different conversations about expectations.

Answer briefly and completely. The surgeon has heard every version; there's nothing on that list that surprises them, and the only bad answer is an incomplete one.

Three things not to do

• Don't ask about price in the consult. The surgeon usually doesn't handle it and it eats your minutes. Price questions go to the coordinator, before or after.
• Don't try to relitigate the procedure choice if the surgeon has given you a clear, numbers-based reason for it. Ask them to explain it once more if you need to; then decide.
• Don't leave without the numbers written down. Dilation wears off; memory of a ten-minute conversation in a second language does not come back.

After the consult

You'll usually be handed the consent form at this point, or be told it's waiting at reception. Take it back to the hotel. Read it against your notes. If anything the surgeon said doesn't match the document — a different procedure, a missing enhancement clause, a different surgeon's name — message the coordinator that evening, not at 7am on surgery day. Then get an early night; tomorrow is the short part.