To quote a Navy doc during my recent eye exam:
"Statistics show that pilots and applicants experience very few PRK complications compared to the rest of the population."
Don't be the abnormal applicant that has starbursts.
Is this due to the fact that pilots somehow have superior outcomes, or that they just don't tell anyone about their complications? -- I would guess the latter.
Could make flying the ball interesting
Interesting is not exactly the word I used.
The bottom line is that unless the starbursts are ridiculously bad, they will not be detected in an eye exam -- it is almost completely subjective. It is also almost completely disqualifying.
As a little side note, the former head of Navy Refractive Surgery, who developed the Refractive Surgery program for the Navy and Air Force was an F-14 pilot before going to med school (TOPGUN Instructor, highest score ever recorded in a scored ACM exercise at the annual F-14 fighter derby, real underachiever). He claims that he had horrible starbursts and actually thought it was normal before he became an opthomologist.
One of the most significant indicators or starbursts and glare is pupil size vs. treatment zone size. Do you know the size of your fully dilated pupil and the size of the area of your cornea that was treated (it should be on your surgical records)? The other common indicators are bad surgeons and bad luck.