Khan Sameer, MD

I have seen Dr Kahn for 4 or 5 years — I have nothing bad to say about him — I think he is great — the problem — they overbook — each year I have felt like changing doctors — simply because my appointments take well over an hour and ½ — I walked out last year because I was in the waiting room in excess of 40 minutes and no one ever checked or told me what the delay was — today I went in for an 11:10 appointment — was seen at 11:30 by an assistant then was placed in a room to wait for the doctor — 50 minutes later I am still waiting and no one said anything — many other patients in the room were complaining — I finally left — they totally overbook and have been doing that for the past 3 years — I am done with them.

I would not recommend Dr. Khann.
His staff is great, very helpful, very friendly. The billing staff made a mistake, but that’s ok, we’re all human.
My problem is that Dr. Khann locked a metal clamp onto my half-​numbed eyelid and flipped it over so roughly that the instrument was gouging through the over turned skin into the top of my eyeball. The discomfort was shocking, and my body reactively pulled away. Dr. Khann lost his temper (?) at this immediately and yelled at me that I could not move like that and if I did he would be unable to perform the operation. I told him that he was pressing hard against my eye, I could not control the reaction, and to be a little more careful. He did so, and we got through the rest of the procedure. To his credit, for the rest of the procedure he apologized for the outburst and several times after.
My tolerance for pain is high. I’ve broken bones, had pins drilled into bones, surgery on organs, a stick rammed down my throat. I can handle pain, but eyes are different from the rest of your body. They are HIGHLY reactive and need a little patience and care and I have to believe any eye doctor would know these things and go a little easy, a little slow.
I’m not going back.

I had terrific anxiety about LASIK. I’d like to thank that safety film shown in my 7^th grade wood shop class for a life-​long unease of anything coming near my eyes! The idea that someone might vaporize parts of them with a laser beam was well off the charts of anxiety, but I hated wearing glasses and had never heard a story of LASIK going wrong so I decided to at least talk to a doctor about the options. I depend on the Polyclinic to keep the rest of my body in good repair, and I chose the Polyclinic’s Dr. Khan by default. I’m glad I did.
The consultation and eye exam was free and packed with enough information to preemptively cover most of the list of questions that I’d brought with me. The doctor’s assistant, Bryce, appears to be a complete nerd for the subject of LASIK, and as a patient, I found this to be a rather reassuring quality. I didn’t spend as much time talking to Dr. Khan himself at that first appointment, but on the day of the surgery I found him to have a mellow, comfortable bedside manner that helped me forget how often I’ve seen lasers blow up spaceships. Also, the procedure itself really is as easy to get through as most patients claim it is. I am fairly sure that I will never have a weirder experience (barring the odd alien abduction), but it wasn’t painful or even particularly uncomfortable. The Valium probably helped, as did the teddy bear. Recovery was easy too: after a week I was just taking basic artificial tear-​type eye drops as needed and wearing sunglasses when outdoors. My eyesight is keener than I’d expected and I wish I’d done this years ago.
One thing that wasn’t optimal for me was that the actual surgery is done at TLC’s facility in Bellevue. If you’re a Polyclinic patient because it’s close to home in Seattle, you’ll either need a friend to drive you back over the bridge (probably at a time when everyone you know is at work), or bring lots of cab fare.