Jessica Starr's suicide is not the first to reportedly be linked to Lasik eye surgery.
A popular TV meteorologist took her own life after telling viewers she was suffering in the aftermath of Lasik surgery.
Jessica Starr, a 35-year-old married mother of two children, pleaded for help in a video she posted to social media a month before dying by suicide this week.
“I am struggling a little so I still need all the prayers and well wishes. This is a hard go. The doctor says it could take three months or so before I feel like 100 percent again,” she said.
After learning of her death, her heartbroken colleagues at WJBK in Detroit fought back tears live on TV.
Her death is putting a spotlight on Lasik eye surgery. At least 11 people have ended their own lives after suffering pain and even blindness after the operation, according to the Lasik Complication Support Group.
Max Cronin, 27, took his own life in 2016, leaving a note that said: "Doctors destroyed my eyes and ruined my life."
"On his 27th birthday my son woke up hopeless. His dreams for his life, his goals had been taken away from him," his heartbroken mother, Nancy, told Inside Edition.
In another case, Paula Cofer says she has endured decades of pain following Lasik.
"My eyes began to burn and burn and burn and it just never let up. It was just constant burning sometimes stinging, stabbing," she told Inside Edition.
Dr. Eric Donnenfeld, spokesman for the American Academy of Ophthalmology, says Lasik is safe for the vast majority of patients.
"The risk of complications is small and [in] the trials that have been done recently usually 96 percent of patients say they are extraordinarily happy with the procedure," he told Inside Edition.
But a doctor who played a key role in getting the surgery approved by the FDA is campaigning to have Lasik surgery banned.
“Don't do it! There's no reason to do it! You're just looking for trouble,” Dr. Morris Waxler told Inside Edition.
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