Call it the Lasik indicator.
With the weak economy forcing consumers to cut back on discretionary spending, laser vision-correction surgeries have been falling — as they did during the last recession.
More than 800,000 Americans got Lasik surgery in 2007, a slight increase from 2006. But the numbers started slumping along with the economy in the second half of last year. And industry analysts are now predicting a Lasik recession.
"We're forecasting a 17 percent drop for 2008," said David Harmon, president of Market Scope, an eye surgery market research house.
Harmon said that when first-quarter data become available next month, he expects it to show an even sharper decline in Lasik surgeries than in 2001. That time around, the sour economy triggered a three-year slump in the laser procedures, which are typically not covered by insurance.
Lasik — for laser-assisted in situ keratomileusis — typically costs anywhere from $800 to $3,000 or more per eye.
Earlier this year, two main players in the Lasik business — Advanced Medical Optics, a leading maker of laser surgery equipment, and LCA-Vision, which owns a chain of laser surgery centers — warned of a market slowdown.
Besides the economic challenge, the industry is contending with a small but growing number of complaints about the results of Lasik procedures — an issue to be discussed at a federal regulatory hearing on Friday.
Harmon's forecast is based on the relatively strong correlation in recent years between Lasik procedures and the Conference Board's index of consumer confidence in the economy.
Doctors and analysts said a wide range of elective medical procedures, including breast implants and skin treatments like Botox injections, are also being affected.
"People are just being a little more conservative about their finances," said Dr. Robert Cykiert, a New York ophthalmologist who does both eye surgery and Botox injections.
In the case of Botox, for example, Cykiert's existing patients are not spacing out their periodic treatments, he said, but some who are interested in Botox have been hesitant to start treatments.
So far, though, Lasik procedures are the most measurably affected.