I went to Accuvision for a (free) consultation yesterday (20/3/02). I was impressed by the experience - pleasant environment, helpful staff, and running to schedule. The consultation took over an hour, and seemed very thorough, including both corneal mapping and use of the aberrometer to measure internal refractive problems. The opthalmologist identified lenticular astigmatism on top of my -8 myopia. They were also able to tell me my corneal thickness (over 600 microns), the flap thickness (150 microns) and the level of ablation (114 microns); it's comforting to know that over half of my corneal thickness will be left untouched the the op. They also pointed out that older laser technologies (as used by some other clinics) would have ablated over 200 microns for my prescription. They were comfortable answering all my questions about what might go wrong, and there was absolutely no hard sell, which surprised me given that the consultation was free. They quoted me 1500 per eye (and they firmly encourage doing both eyes together), with a 20% chance of needing retreatment to refine the vision, which would be provided at no extra cost. Because of the level of my prescription, the initial surgery would not use the fabled wavefront technology, as the astigmatism is only a small fraction (2%) of the prescription. Any reatreatment, however, would probably use wavefront analysis, as the astigmatism would be more significant. My spectacle prescription had included prism, which the opthalmologist found to be unnecessary. However, he pointed out that using wavefront analysis, it would have been possible to counteract a certain level of prism as part of the treatment. Another good feature of Accuvision is the length of the waiting lists. I was able to get my consultation within a week, and was offered the option of a surgery date in three weeks time. I left feeling reassured that the benefits of LASIK outweighed the risks, and that I would be happy for Accuvision to do the treatment. However, I think that I will have another consultation somewhere else first; not because I saw anything to concern me at at Accuvision, but simply because a second opinion seems sensible when contemplating surgery on something as valuable as one's eyes.