“After more than 15 years, it’s still amazing to wake-up in the morning with clear distance vision, free of my contact lenses and glasses!”
Bay Area media personality, Greg Sherrell
LASIK with Dr. Hyver in 2006
Now that you’re ready to do something about your glasses and contact lenses and to leave behind all those years of hardship and expense, you don’t want to settle for just an average laser vision correction outcome, you want a great visual outcome, as you’ll live with the results for many years to come.
That’s why it’s important to choose your doctor wisely, and why we think Dr. Hyver’s talent and dedication, the state-of-the-art treatment technology he employs, and his commitment to maintaining your new vision make him a sound choice for your laser vision correction needs.
The caliber of your surgeon is probably the single most important factor in getting a great visual outcome. But as in any profession, not all laser eye surgeons are equally talented and capable, and those differences could bear on the safety and quality of your surgical outcome. That’s why it’s important to evaluate your surgeon across objective measures, including:
Dr. Scott Hyver is a Harvard MD, an ABO Board-Certified ophthalmologist, a fellowship-trained corneal refractive surgeon, and since 2006, the San Francisco 49ers eye doctor and laser eye surgeon. He’s been in practice for more than 20 years, specializing exclusively in laser vision correction, and is a LASIK patient himself.
As unusual as it sounds, some surgeons don’t see their patients at the initial consultation, often meeting them for the very first time on the day of surgery.
Since we believe great surgical outcomes start in the pre-operative stage of the patient’s care, we think it’s essential that your surgeon meets with you at the consultation. In that way he can evaluate your diagnostic data and arrive at a deeper understanding of your vision characteristics and lifestyle needs so he can personally customize the surgical plan, which we believe leads to superior visual outcomes.
That’s why Dr. Hyver is dedicated to meeting with every patient at the initial consultation, while other surgeons may delegate this critical step to non-physician personnel, such as optometrists and patient counselors.
Apart from the caliber of your surgeon and his personal investment in your pre-operative care, you should also determine to what extent he employs a state-of-the-art diagnostic and treatment infrastructure, as modern platforms offer safety and performance advantages over older generation technology still in use in the market. Dr. Hyver was one of the first Bay Area surgeons, for example, to acquire the Zeiss Visumax femtosecond laser platform (pictured) when it was first FDA-approved for SMILE vision correction of nearsightedness and astigmatism.
Advanced laser treatment platforms like the Zeiss Visumax laser and the Alcon EX500 excimer laser are expensive to acquire and maintain, so some practices and academic institutions may continue to use older technology to save money. It’s important, therefore, that you know the difference, as the use of older laser technology could result in a less than optimal surgical outcome.
Some practices believe that the patient relationship ends as soon as 12 months following your surgery, after which they charge you for any additional care, including enhancement treatment, further adding to your out-of-pocket costs. On the other end of the spectrum are the practices that promise free “lifetime” enhancements, often backed by 3rd party business corporations with problematic financial histories, including bankruptcy, potentially calling into question their future financial stability and capacity to honor their obligations.
Since Dr. Hyver stands behind his work, we offer our patients free enhancements and post-op exams under our Extended Care Program (“ECP”), even if you need more than one retreatment. And on the question of financial stability, Dr. Hyver has remained financially strong and has fully honored his aftercare obligations to his patients for the more than 20 years he’s been in practice.