Lasik’s benefits not always clear

Although he is a pitcher, Mark Hendrickson was concerned about his hitting or lack thereof. The Florida Marlins’ left-hander had a lifetime .049 batting average. That’s terrible, even for a player who is not expected to hit much.

Seeking a solution, Hendrickson had Lasik surgery in January to correct his vision. The result? He has four hits in 17 at-bats so far, equaling his previous career total in 81 at-bats. And on the mound, he is 5-1 with a 3.56 ERA. Last year with the Los Angeles Dodgers, he went 4-8 with a 5.21 ERA.

Hendrickson said he knew during spring training that his hitting would improve. He was seeing the ball better, which boosted his confidence. What he didn’t expect was that laser eye surgery also would help his pitching.

“I didn’t anticipate that because a lot of pitching is feel,” said Hendrickson, who is 6-foot-9 and played four years in the NBA before turning to baseball. “For me, it’s like sometimes you can throw a strike blind because it’s more repetition. But [Lasik] has allowed my body to relax more and my eyes to relax more and see everything more clearly.”

Amid the constant quest to achieve an edge, often by any means necessary, Hendrickson is part of a growing number of athletes to undergo Lasik surgery, which usually takes 10 to 15 minutes and involves the reshaping of the inner corneal layer. Tiger Woods, who became the foremost pitchman for Lasik after his surgery in Rockville in 1999, is the most famous. But there are many others in all sports.

Nearsighted during his entire athletic career, Hendrickson said he stubbornly refused to wear glasses or contact lenses. Yet he managed to be named All-Pac-10 in basketball at Washington State and get drafted in two sports. His vision was hampered, but his other senses improved.

“You just do what you have to do,” he said.

Partly because of the slumping economy, Lasik (laser assisted in situ keratomileusis) surgeries have declined from 1.4 million in 2000 to 800,000 last year. But the association with sports keeps growing. Lasik clinics not only proudly advertise their work with athletes, they have become affiliated with professional sports teams.

“A lot of people are concerned they may not do well [with the surgery],” said ophthalmic surgeon Mark Whitten, who heads the TLC Laser Eye Center in Rockville and has received national attention for fixing the eyes of Woods and dozens of other sports figures. “When they see athletes are willing to have it done, it makes them feel better.

“All of these things start with being able to see, and it just makes a big difference in your ability to perform.”

Whitten, whose expansive office is adorned with athletes’ photographs and signed balls, freely uses the term “performance-enhancing” when discussing Lasik, ignoring the red flag it raises considering the reports of athletes using steroids and other drugs. But he and other eye surgeons insist they cannot create bionic eyes capable of super sight. Baseball slugger Gary Sheffield, who does not wear glasses or contacts, reportedly was refused Lasik surgery, and Whitten says he has turned down athletes who wanted to improve their 20/20 vision.

Some eyes are capable of that; most others are not. Lasik “can only do what the eye is capable of doing,” said Dr. Jay Schwartz, who performed the surgery on Phoenix Suns star Amare Stoudemire after his rookie season in 2002-03.

“You can’t do anything beyond what the eye is capable of achieving beyond contact lens and glasses. It gets rid of the hassle and pain of putting in contacts,” Schwartz said.

“The laser allows you to see as well as you could possibly see,” Whitten said. “Where drugs allow you to play better than you could play, to do things you couldn’t do, this allows you to do what God gave you the ability to do. If I gave everyone hard contact lenses, they would see perfectly every time. Basically, this is what the laser is doing, acting like that perfect hard lens. Without the hassles.”

Some athletes, such as Woods and Nationals shortstop Cristian Guzman, say they see better after Lasik surgery than they did with contacts. Whitten said golfers especially might be able to see things they did not see before.

“The immediate benefit is that they can see the green better,” he said. “They can read the green. They can see the slope. They can see which way the grass is growing. There is a difference when you have [Lasik] than when you’re wearing contacts. It’s almost a three-dimensional difference.”

Guzman, who wore contacts, visited Whitten for Lasik surgery after he hit .219 during the 2005 season. He missed the entire 2006 season because of a shoulder injury and played in just 46 games last year because of other injuries. But his eyesight is terrific. He has hit well over .300 since his surgery.

“I see the ball better,” he said. “I see everything better. When you see the ball good, it makes you a better hitter.”

Woods already was a golfing phenomenon with contacts-assisted 20/20 vision when he came to see Whitten at his clinic, then known as Whitten-Perraut Eye Associates. After Lasik gave him 20/15 eyesight, he won five straight tournaments.

“He was blind without his glasses or contacts,” Whitten said. “Not only couldn’t he see the big E on the chart, he couldn’t see the chart. And he couldn’t see the wall. … In two weeks, the cup was actually looking bigger to him. He was putting into a cup that looked bigger. You can imagine how the rest of the guys felt.”

Cleveland Cavaliers superstar LeBron James is another athlete pleased with his Lasik surgery, although not necessarily as a means of performance enhancement. James, who shed his contact lenses for Lasik before this season, said the procedure has worked out “great” for him.

“It’s something I recommend people get if they have problems seeing,” he said.

But has it helped him as a basketball player?

“Not much,” James said during a first-round series with the Washington Wizards. “Just everyday life, seeing things I know I couldn’t see before. As far as my game, it hasn’t done much because I was gonna get better no matter if I had it or not.”

For all of Woods’ unparalleled success and name-recognition, he was not Whitten’s only significant patient. His practice got a big boost after Fred Funk set a 36-hole record in the Kemper Open only two days after having Lasik surgery in 1998.

Although he faded on the final day and lost the tournament, Funk’s surgery got a lot of attention.

“It put Dr. Whitten on the map,” he said. “It was a great week for him and a great week for me.”

The success of Funk, Tom Kite and a few other golfers caught the attention of Woods, whose endorsements have further popularized (and legitimized) the procedure. As Hendrickson noted, “Tiger Woods is on the cover [of the brochure]. So, hey, if he did it. …”

The colorful, outspoken Funk is another enthusiastic supporter of Lasik. But even he concedes it was more the “honeymoon effect” of the surgery that helped his game at the Kemper.

“In the first stages, you’re so in awe of the clarity,” said Funk, who played and coached at Maryland and now is a member of the Champions Tour. “And I was so excited, not having to wear contacts. And I was freed of the anxiety of having the surgery. It freed up my mind, and off I went.

“But I can’t say it makes you a better golfer. It makes life a little easier. You don’t have to worry about contacts. You don’t have to worry about dust flying in your eyes. It’s one less thing you have to deal with. It’s a great convenience.”

When assessing the effect of Lasik surgery, the athlete’s age, skill level and the sport they play must be considered. Is James a better basketball player because of Lasik or because he won the genetic lottery and works hard to improve?

Despite the success of some athletes, batting averages, golf scores and shooting percentages have not always improved. When performance does improve, it often is because the athlete simply can see well for the first time. Hendrickson’s vision never had been corrected to 20/20 before. Stoudemire had 20/200 vision in one eye and 20/50 in the other and played without contacts yet still was named rookie of the year.

“That was amazing to me,” said Schwartz, the Suns’ team ophthalmologist. “Once he could see, holy cow. … But I take absolutely no credit for any of his success. He just couldn’t see.”

“We don’t know if this is really performance-enhancing,” Cleveland Indians team ophthalmologist James Conforto said, citing a study indicating that attributes like “visual motor memory” and “reflex reaction” are more important than what he calls “supra-normal vision.”

Indians shortstop Jhonny Peralta had Lasik surgery after hitting .257 in 2006. The next year, with 20/15 vision, he hit .270 with a marked increase in home runs. But a slightly nearsighted Peralta hit .292 in 2005.

“Did Jhonny really have a better year as a result of the Lasik?” Conforto said. “We just don’t know.”

Some team vision specialists urge their players to have Lasik surgery, usually when contacts are not the answer. That was the case when Conforto sent Peralta to a Lasik surgeon as a last resort because contacts could not correct Peralta’s unusual problems.

“Our hands were forced to make this final recommendation, which we were not quick to do because of risks,” Conforto said.

And there are risks to the procedure. According to various studies, 5 percent of the approximately 6 million patients who have had Lasik since it was approved in the United States a decade ago have reported side effects like dry eyes, double vision and night vision problems, such as seeing “haloes” around bright lights.

The so-called catastrophic surgeries that resulted in decreased vision or worse are less than 1 percent. Still, a Food and Drug Administration panel recently recommended clearer warnings about the risks of Lasik surgery.

According to Whitten, surgical and technological advances combined with more thorough and detailed examinations have resulted in fewer problems of late.

“You certainly have to separate the old technology from the new technology we have now,” he said. “Within the last three or four years, there’s been a dramatic drop in people complaining about glaring haloes and dry eye.”

Whitten acknowledges that Lasik has its limits. After having the surgery in Canada before it was approved in the United States, “my putting got better,” he said. “But my swing still stinks.”