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Psychiatrist recommends personality assessments for LASIK candidates
NEW ORLEANS — Preoperative screening of refractive surgery candidates should include objective evaluations of personality factors, according to a psychiatrist who was invited to speak here.
Jennifer Morse, MD, worked with the Navy Refractive Surgery Center in San Diego to evaluate the role that personality and psychiatric variables play in determining patient satisfaction and quality of life following LASIK.
"The majority of patients are very satisfied after LASIK, but there is a certain subset who are very unhappy and very vocal," Dr. Morse said during Refractive Surgery Subspecialty Day preceding the American Academy of Ophthalmology meeting.
Dr. Morse evaluated 309 patients, with a mean age of 36, who were scheduled to undergo conventional LASIK. The patients were given a quality of life questionnaire, as well as a standardized personality survey before and 1 month after surgery. The questionnaire was designed to assess quality of life, regret, nonvisual eye complaints, physical appearance and self-esteem.
While the majority of patients were "highly satisfied" with their surgery, it is the dissatisfied patients who should be every surgeon's primary concern, Dr. Morse said.
"These are the people who take up your chair time, your phone time and your staff's time. If you don't respond to them, they're out in the community and they're on the Internet. Some go on to file lawsuits," she said.
Personality is the one factor that cannot be mitigated in unhappy patients. "For all the technology you hear about today you are not going to be able to change that. You need to assess it beforehand and counsel these people pre- and postoperatively and work with them on their personality styles."
Dr. Morse also stressed that personality tests used for this purpose must be objective, as surgeons' own personalities will impact the way a surgical candidate is perceived. "Our goal is to develop customized screening tools you can use in your practice," she said.