I have a professor (and good friend) who has absolutely terrible vision. He's been severely near-sighted since the age of three or four, and it's a very real possibility that he'll be legally blind in at least one eye by the time he's seventy. LASIK, obviously, seems a good option for him.

The problem, however, is that his eyes, and one in particular, are so deformed by myopia that the retina in one actually detached a few years ago. He lost his vision completely for a few days, and recovered it to a small degree after painful surgery.

Is LASIK possible in an eye that's extremely deformed? Granted, deformation is what myopia actually is, but what are the limits?

He's fifty-five. Even if his priorly detached retina weren't a problem, how beneficial would such surgery be at his age?