Safety glasses

Protect your eyes after LASIK with safety glasses.

After LASIK, it's important to wear safety glasses or other protective eyewear during sports, when you're using power tools, or when you're involved in any potentially hazardous activity that might put your eyes in harm's way.

According to Prevent Blindness America:

• Accidents involving common household products cause 125,000 eye injuries each year in the U.S.
• More than 40,000 Americans suffer eye injuries each year while playing sports.
• More than 2,000 people injure their eyes at work each day.
• About 10% of workplace eye injuries require one or more missed days of work for recovery.
• Up to 20% of workplace eye injuries cause temporary or permanent vision loss.
• Experts believe that proper eye protection could lessen the severity of or even prevent 90% of these eye injuries.

To be rated as safety glasses, both the frames and the lenses of protective eyewear must adhere to higher impact-resistance standards than those required in the U.S. for regular prescription eyeglasses. Most safety glasses and protective eyewear use polycarbonate lenses. These lenses are very lightweight and are up to 10 times more impact resistant than regular plastic or glass lenses.

In general, safety eyewear should not only protect the front of your eyes: it should have a wrap-around style or include side shields to protect your eyes from a side-impact injury as well.

Usually after LASIK, non-prescription safety glasses that you can purchase online or from a variety of retailers will be all you need to protect your eyes. But in some cases (particularly if you are over age 40), prescription safety eyewear may be a better choice. Your eye doctor or optician will be able to help you decide the type and style of safety eyewear that best suits your needs.