The FDA-supported LASIK Quality of Life Collaboration Project (PROWL studies, n=574) found that dissatisfaction with vision after LASIK ranged from 1% to 4% across two prospective cohorts; dissatisfaction with the surgery itself was 1—2%. These are the highest-quality outcome data available, conducted under joint FDA/NIH/DoD oversight. A smaller cohort study (n=200) found 98.5% satisfied or very satisfied. Self-selected patient review data from RealSelf (446 reviews, 2007—2022) placed the “not worth it” rate at 12.6% — substantially higher, consistent with the well-documented negativity bias in voluntary online reviews. The 4% PROWL upper bound is used as the action regret estimate; 12.6% is a plausible ceiling.
On the inaction side, no published survey directly asks glasses or contact lens wearers whether they regret not having LASIK. The closest proxy is a Gallup survey (n=1,050, 2000) finding that 40% of corrective-lens wearers would consider laser eye surgery at some point — with roughly 11% expressing intent within the next year or two. A longitudinal comparison study (n=1,800 over 3 years) found that contact lens wearer strong satisfaction declined from 63% at baseline to 54% by year 3, while 88% of former contact wearers who switched to LASIK remained strongly satisfied at year 3. We use 25% as a conservative inaction proxy, adjusting down from the 40% consideration rate to reflect the gap between consideration intent and genuine retrospective regret.
The pattern is consistent with Gilovich and Medvec’s inaction-dominates finding: the people who never got LASIK — whether due to cost, fear of complications, or inertia — sustain a persistent open counterfactual, while those who proceeded overwhelmingly report the outcome as positive. The main reason the action rate stays low is rigorous candidate screening: patients with thin corneas, severe dry eye, or high prescriptions outside the safe treatment range are excluded. The failures — chronic dry eye, corneal ectasia, halos and glare — are real but relatively uncommon among properly screened candidates, and they account for most of the action regret in the data. The inaction side has no such natural screening; any corrective-lens wearer who “always meant to get it” qualifies.