Translating your prescription and records for a Colombian clinic

What the clinic actually needs from you

For a remote pre-screen, a Colombian refractive clinic wants the same things a clinic anywhere wants: your current glasses prescription, your contact-lens prescription if different, your age, roughly how long your prescription has been stable, any eye conditions or surgeries, your medications, and your dry-eye picture. We list the full set in What to send with your LASIK inquiry. This article is about the first two items, because they're the ones where format causes trouble.

The single best thing you can do is send the original document as an image or PDF, untouched. Don't retype it, don't "clean it up," don't convert anything. A refractive coordinator in Medellín reads US, Canadian, UK, and European prescriptions every week and knows the conventions. Your transcription is more likely to introduce an error than their reading is.

The terms, side by side

The decimal comma

Colombia, like most of Latin America and Europe, writes decimals with a comma. So a prescription that comes back to you may read −2,50 −0,75 × 180, and a quote may say COP 4.500.000 with dots as thousands separators. This is a reading issue, not a data issue — nobody will misinterpret your −2.50 — but it's worth knowing so you don't misread a quote by a factor of a thousand. The quote-reading side is in Reading a Colombian LASIK quote.

Plus versus minus cylinder

This is the one place where a well-meaning patient can actually cause confusion. Some UK, European, and ophthalmologist-written prescriptions express astigmatism in plus-cylinder form; most optometrist-written US prescriptions and most Colombian ones use minus-cylinder. The two are mathematically equivalent and any refractive coordinator transposes between them in their head. If you try to transpose it yourself and get it wrong, you've just sent a prescription that doesn't match your eyes. Send the original. If you want to be helpful, add a line saying "written in plus-cyl by an ophthalmologist" — that's it.

Contact-lens prescriptions

These are different from glasses prescriptions (the powers are adjusted for the lens sitting on the eye) and they carry two extra numbers, base curve and diameter, that the clinic uses to understand which cut-off timeline applies to you. The easiest way to send this is a photo of the box or the blister-pack label; it has the brand, the material family, the powers, and the BC/DIA all on it. Then say when you last wore them. The cut-off by lens type is in When to stop contact lenses before LASIK.

If you wear toric or rigid gas-permeable lenses, say so explicitly in the email body. Those have longer cut-offs and the coordinator will want to plan your dates around them.

Prior eye records

If you've had an eye exam with imaging — a retinal photo, an OCT scan, a topography from an earlier LASIK consult somewhere else — send it. It's not required, and the clinic will repeat everything on exam day on its own equipment, but a prior topography in particular lets the surgeon flag a corneal concern before you fly, which is exactly the situation described in what happens if the exam says no. Ask your optometrist for the PDF export; most clinical systems can produce one.

Records in English are fine. You do not need a certified translation for a medical intake — the clinic coordinators read English, and the numbers are universal. Certified translations only come into it if you're dealing with insurers or legal paperwork later.

Quirks by country

A few format habits that trip up coordinators less than patients think, but are worth a sentence.

• US: Optometrist prescriptions are almost always minus-cyl and often include a PD and an expiry date. Ophthalmologist prescriptions may be plus-cyl. Contact-lens prescriptions are legally separate documents and may be with the retailer rather than the doctor — the box label is easier.
• Canada: Same conventions as the US. Some provincial forms add a "prism" field; if yours has a prism value, mention it, because prism isn't something LASIK corrects and the surgeon will want to discuss it.
• UK: High-street opticians commonly write in minus-cyl but hospital eye services and some independents use plus-cyl. UK prescriptions also often include a "BVD" (back vertex distance) value for high prescriptions — send it, don't explain it.
• Europe: Decimal commas already, plus-cyl common in Germany and Austria, and axis sometimes written with a degree sign. All readable.
• Australia / NZ: Same as the UK, minus-cyl dominant.

A sample first email

If you're writing directly to a clinic rather than through the desk, this is the whole message. Short, factual, attachments named.

That's every item from What to send with your LASIK inquiry in one paragraph, with the two attachments this article is about. A coordinator can answer it in one reply.

What comes back, and how to read it

After the exam you'll get a report, usually in Spanish with an English summary. The key lines: esfera / cilindro / eje for each eye, paquimetría in microns, a topography image with a printed index, and a line stating candidacy, often as candidato para LASIK / femto-LASIK / PRK or a reason not. Photograph or PDF this. Your home optometrist will want the pachymetry and topography specifically for your follow-up visits, and your HSA or insurer may want the surgeon's note alongside the invoice — see the itemised-invoice article.

Sending it

Email or WhatsApp, as clear photos or PDFs. One message with everything is better than five with one thing each. Name the files sensibly — prescription-2026-06.pdf, contacts-box.jpg — because the coordinator is going to file them against your record. If you're using the desk's form, there's an upload field; if you're emailing a clinic directly, the same rules apply.

If you don't have a prescription at all

It happens — people who've been in contacts for years sometimes only have the lens box. Send the box. Then book a quick refraction at any optometrist at home, or, if you're already committed to the trip, know that the clinic will refract you on exam day regardless. The pre-screen is weaker without it, which raises the small risk of a surprise on exam day, but it's not a blocker.