Comment Re: Astronomy, and general poor night-time results (Score 1) 550
PRK also has a much higher incidence of starbursts and halos
Yes, but you're overlooking an important detail -- in the early 2000s, an average PRK (or LASEK) patient went into surgery with significantly worse vision than an average Lasik patient. Until fairly recently, the maximum amount of correction the FDA allowed for PRK & LASEK was a diopter or two HIGHER than the limit imposed for Lasik... but the maximum-allowed diameter of the ablation zone was about 2mm LESS. The net result is that patients who were disqualified for Lasik were able to get PRK/LASEK, but their blend zone was fairly steep, and was often smaller in diameter than many patients' pupils in the dark. Meanwhile, patients with milder vision problems ended up getting Lasik by default, because it healed faster & was more heavily-advertised.
In other words, the PRK/LASEK patients who had the worst problems with halos are basically the ones who wouldn't have even been ALLOWED to get Lasik back in the early 2000s. I know, because I was one of 'em (1/2 diopter more astigmatism, and I would have been disqualified from PRK/LASEK too).
The good news is that the FDA finally raised the limits allowed for both maximum correction and ablation-zone diameter, and wavefront laser surgery can now fix most of the problems caused by the old FDA limits (enlarging the fully-corrected zone so it's as big as a darkness-accommodated pupil, and eliminating the halos in the process).