I'd like to breakdown both procedures for you to better compare them.
ICL involves implantation of a soft, foldable lens into the internal part of the eye called the “sulcus”, which is a rather narrow space between the natural lens of the eye and the back of the iris (the coloured diaphragm of the eye).
After the successful insertion of the ICL, the quality of vision is usually excellent, with minimal side effects like glare and halos at night. Glare and halos at night tend to accompany LASIK, particularly for higher power of treatment.
As the ICL surgery does not affect the cornea (other than the small incision at the side of the cornea), it tends not to cause as much dry eyes as LASIK, no matter how high the eye power treated.
In comparison to LASIK, ICL is particularly great for treating high amount of myopia and astigmatism.
In my years of doing ICL, I have successfully corrected close to 2000 degrees of myopia and up to 500-600 degrees of astigmatism for my patients using ICLs with good results.
LASIK will not be able to do justice to such high powers. ICL is also more stable and safer for eyes with thin or funny-shaped corneas that may be at risk of shape changes and warpage after LASIK.
However, with the advancement of medical technology, “LASIK” is no longer just “LASIK”. Within the same family of laser vision correction treatment, there are also other treatment such as advanced surface ablation (e.g. LASEK and transPRK) and RELEX SMILE.
Even “LASIK” itself has several options, such as standard LASIK, customized LASIK (also called wavefront-guided or topography-guided LASIK) and LASIK-EXTRA, a cornea-strengthening procedure. When chosen well, some of these options can provide results that rival ICL.
To be fair, I would say it really is a case by case situation. I'm certainly interested in finding out more about your eye power and measurements etc, before making a final conclusion on which treatment is best for you.
