I was told I have \"high order aberration.\" What does that mean?

A high order aberration, or "higher order aberration" is a vision impairment that typically cannot be diagnosed with your standard eye exam. Since traditional eye exams test only for acuteness of vision, there are plethora of vision issues that can only be diagnosed with more thorough vision testing. These vision impairments include: star bursts, double vision, ghosting, halos, and even more.

High order aberrations can be inherent, or you can develop these vision issues as a result of some surgical procedures. There has been questions in regards to the connection between LASIK Eye Surgery and higher order aberrations. While this may have been a serious risk at one time, the ongoing refinement of the LASIK procedure and the technological advances in eye surgery altogether has greatly reduced the occurrence of higher order aberrations resulting from eye surgery.

It is also important to remember that some higher order aberrations exist prior to eye surgeries. If you have one of the aforementioned higher order aberrations, or have other vision issues that have thus far not been addressed by an ophthalmologist or other vision specialist, it is important to get these assessed prior to your LASIK surgery procedure.