Since the field is still emerging, it's crucial for patients to choose their physician carefully, says MacRae, who has been honored nationally for his work and who is an author of the book Wavefront Customized Visual Correction: The Quest for Supervision II. While price is always a concern for consumers, MacRae says that sometimes a higher price covers costs that contribute to patient safety. For instance, a doctor like MacRae turns away significant business after investing hours with a patient because he discovers that many patients around 20 percent are not good candidates for refractive surgery and might have troublesome side effects. MacRae and other top doctors also use extensive, seemingly repetitive screening techniques to check traits such as the thickness of a person's cornea, which is crucial to the surgery, as well as the characteristics of a patient's pupil.

"The bottom line is that if you use state-of-the-art techniques and you choose your patients carefully, you should get outstanding results. While most of our patients are ecstatic with the results, the field is so young that there are constantly discoveries that should improve patients' vision even more," says MacRae, who has helped train nearly 1,000 physicians around the country about refractive surgery.

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