r/SMILEeyesurgery

Some advice on how this works would be great.

My contact lens prescription is -5.00 and -4.50, and I see very well with my lenses. However, my glasses prescription is stronger at -5.50 and -5.00, but I actually find my vision blurry and feel like I’m undercorrected when wearing them.

My autorefractor and cycloplegic refraction both showed -5.25 and -4.50.

For anyone who has been through SMILE or knows about this, which prescription would typically be used to determine the target for surgery? And if they used -5.25 and -4.50 as the target, could that affect my final visual result considering my glasses is stronger than this and my vision seems poor

Hey guys, i had SMILE surgery done on both eyes on 7/21/26. I had a high prescription (my contacts were -6.00 but the office told me my glasses were like -7.25). Everything seemed to be going great, first few days my far vision was amazing, however I did notice my left eye was weaker than my right, was told that it was part of normal healing, but with both eyes, I could see amazing at a distance.

Now at week 3, im having a problem with my vision becoming much blurrier as the day goes on. I know because I wake up in the mornings with clear crisp vision, but then by noon time, its like I can barely read any signs on the road. My eyes are also a lot more sensitive to light in the daytime. My eyes dont feel particularly dry, but I put the lubricating drops which don’t even help. Doc told me to use the prednisone drops 2x a day.

Anyone who had SMILE had this experience?? Does it ever get better?

I did my SMILE procedure and on my right eye I think I had a slight movement and in the video that my partner took of the screen while I was having it done (the place I did it at allowed this), when the first circle goes across the eye while “looking at the green light” it looks like I had a slight movement and then the circle was extended out after that. Compared to my left eye, where there is no movement and the circle was completely circle for that first part, the right eye had a more oval shape due to the correction after slightly moving. What does this mean for me? Could this cause me any problems down the road? This was before the second portion of the circle started. If that makes any sense, just hoping to ease my nerves. Pictures included in comments for example.

Hello guys, I got my Smile pro surgery done for both eyes.

It is now Day 5 and my left eye is still blurry, right eye is more clearer (For context: my right eye (-2.25)had more power to begin with than my left eye(-1.25))

Doctors say it is a epi defect in my left eye and should heal with time. Looking for advice from people who have gone through this.

Is this normal?

How long does it take to clear up and go to normal vision?

Any suggestions and advice appreciated.

Thank you in advance!

Hey all, I'm 25 and trying to get a read on which direction to push toward before my consultation. Current prescription is -6.50/-0.75 OD and -6.50/-0.75 OS (my left eye actually crept up from -6.00/-0.50 to -6.50/-0.75 over the last ~21 months; right eye's been rock stable).

Central corneal thickness came in at 535 microns on a screening, which is just under the population average, so nowhere near "thin cornea" territory but also not giving me a ton of buffer. I also got diagnosed with blepharitis recently and I'm doing the whole warm compress / lid wipe routine twice a day to get my ocular surface calmed down before anyone will even consider operating.

Given the corneal thickness and the blepharitis, I'm leaning toward ICL or TransPRK since they're the least dependent on my cornea being pristine, but I know TransPRK's recovery week is supposed to be rough (blurry vision, real discomfort for several days vs 1-2 days for SMILE/ICL) and ICL is a lot more expensive and comes with lifelong endothelial cell count monitoring since it's intraocular.

LASIK's obviously appealing for the fast recovery but I keep reading that it's the least tissue-conserving option and carries the highest dry-eye risk of the bunch, which worries me given I already have blepharitis. SMILE seems like a reasonable middle ground but I don't have much info on it.

Has anyone here been in a similar boat (moderate-high myopia, average-ish corneal thickness, and needing to deal with blepharitis first) and can share how their surgeon actually ranked these options once they had the real tomography/topography numbers in hand? Also curious about real-world experiences with TransPRK's recovery week specifically, and whether anyone regretted going ICL vs. laser given the extra cost and monitoring requirement. I'm in the Toronto area if pricing comparisons are useful.

Appreciate any input!

So I was thinking of doing either LASIK or Relex Smile (Pro). I know that Relex smile is a bit more expensive but IF it is less likely to cause problems I am happy to choose it over LASIK.

Also I wanted to ask a possible weird question. Is it possible to do Laser eye Surgery on only one eye and if that worked out fine, do the other a few weeks later? The idea is to safe one eye in case the operation does not work out.

Is it normal that my right eye is still a bit blurry? My prescription wasn't that wild. I had -2.0 myopia and -1.0 astigmatism in my left eye, and -1.5 myopia and -1.0 astigmatism in my right eye. It's been 10 days, and I still can't comfortably see faces or read texts. I think my vision stopped getting better.