There is really no situation where you might need to have LASIK and cataract surgery performed at the same time. While it comes as a surprise to many, our eyes each have TWO focusing elements: 1) the “crystalline” (natural) lens, sitting right behind the pupil and 2) the cornea, the clear dome sitting over the iris and pupil. [Yes, the cornea is a lens.]
LASIK reshapes the cornea, changing its focusing ability so as to correct conditions such as myopia (nearsightedness) -LASIK does not change the natural lens of the eye. A “cataract operation” is easier to understand if you think of it as the removal of the aging natural lens and its replacement with a new artificial lens implant (an IntraOcular Lens or IOL). The latter has a prescription (we call it the “power”) that we can select in advance (just like a spectacle lens or contact lens).
If for example you were -3.00 Diopters myopic (nearsighted), and if your natural lens had a power of +20.00 Diopters, we might replace the old natural lens (the cataract) with a lens implant (IOL) that was +17.00 D. Doing this would get rid of your myopia and the cataract at the same time! So there would be no need to also correct the -3.00 D. of myopia by lasering the cornea at another time.
There may be situations where performing some small degree of laser correction on the cornea after having had a cataract/IOL procedure is a good idea -but this is quite rare.
J.Trevor Woodhams,M.D. – Chief of Surgery, Woodhams Eye Clinic