How many LASIK patients develop postsurgery complications is obscured by a lack of regulation and reporting. Because health insurers don't pay for LASIK, they generally don't track complications. The Food and Drug Administration doesn't require reports from doctors, and regulatory enforcement has been largely limited to recalling malfunctioning lasers.

Evidence of problems is accumulating. Some of the strongest is the growing market for contact lenses designed for people who have undergone LASIK and still have vision problems, some seeing worse than before the surgery. One of the leading post-LASIK lens makers is MedLens Innovations, a Front Royal, Va., company founded in 2000.

Robert Breece, an optometrist and MedLens' president, said his company provides hard contacts to more than 2,500 post-Lasik patients annually and business is increasing about 10 percent every year. Breece said his company serves more than 200 people per year who have been seriously disabled by the surgery.

"I don't get to talk to happy LASIK patients," he said.

By the end of the year, SynergEyes of Carlsbad, Calif., plans to bring to market the first line of contact lenses designed specially for laser eye surgery patients with complications who cannot tolerate hard lenses.

A trial version of the SynergEyes contact lenses have given Paula Cofer, 49, of Tampa, Fla., some relief from dry, itchy eyes and night vision so distorted that she sees up to eight moons.

The specially fitted contacts cost $300 every six months, Cofer said. Contact lenses solution, sterile saline solution, artificial tears and lenses rewetting drops run an additional $150 to $160 per month.

"Life was very simple then," she said about the 30 years she wore glasses. "Now, it's very complicated."

Patients with complications are starting to fight back on the Internet and through support groups. Medical research in the past three years has come up with insights about LASIK worrisome enough that some eye surgeons have begun to ease away from the procedure.

"We've learned the limitations of LASIK," said Dr. Stephen Pflugfelder, professor of ophthalmology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.

An expert in laser eye surgery for more than 15 years, Pflugfelder increasingly is falling back on an older, less invasive procedure known as photorefractive keratectomy, or PRK, which involves only the surface of the eye.

In the past three years, the number of LASIK procedures at Baylor has dropped from about 70 percent to about 50 percent of all laser eye surgeries.

At Duke, LASIK makes up about 80 percent of all laser eye surgeries. Dr. Alan Carlson, head of the Duke Eye Center, is comfortable with that.

"Dry eye hasn't been a big problem," Carlson said.