Lasik Vision Corp., the Canadian company with offices in Bellevue that drew Washington patients across the border for the popular surgery at cut-rate prices, has filed for bankruptcy in Canada. It abruptly shut down its 24 North American clinics leaving patients, many who had prepaid for the surgery, out in the cold with no follow-up care and questionable financial recourse.

One of the continent’s largest laser vision correction operations, Lasik Vision was purchased in January by Toronto-based Icon Laser Eye Centers Inc. for a reported $40 million. The combined operation, which trades on the Vancouver stock exchange, operated 70 treatment centers and reportedly had annual revenues of $150 million.

According to the company, a work stoppage by Lasik surgeons in March at most of its facilities, coupled with what it termed “greater-than-anticipated operating liabilities,” forced the bankruptcy.

That’s bad news for the 120,000 patients treated at Lasik Vision facilities in the United States and Canada, and for numerous others who put down the requisite $1,000 deposit but got neither the treatment nor a refund. It is still unclear whether or not those who used a credit card will be able to have the amount credited.

What made the Canadian Lasik Vision operation so attractive to people in Washington was that the firm provided the treatment for substantially less that local practitioners, offering to correct both eyes for $1,200 to $1,400. Typically treatments cost between $1,500 and $2,000 per eye, according to the Lasik Institute, a non-profit educational organization that promotes the understanding of Lasik procedures.

Dr. Roger Niva of the Physician’s Eye Clinic in Everett, and one of the first surgeons to perform the procedure in the U.S., explained that in the beginning there was only company that made the laser used in the surgery. “They made us put in a card that activated the laser for each individual procedure, and we were billed $500 for each one of those cards. That’s what made the price so high here. Canadian surgeons weren’t required to use that card, so between that and the exchange rate, they had a substantial built in economic advantage.”

Niva said another firm began marketing a laser last year that didn’t require that card and that’s when prices began to fall in the U.S., making local surgeons more cost competitive with the Canadians.

One laser equipment representative believes that with the Canadian connection no longer viable, within three months local practitioners will have overly full procedure schedules.

As with any surgical procedure, complications are always a possibility and there are numerous reports of permanent problems of glare, haloes and wrinkling from the Canadian procedures. Other side effects can include problems with night vision, warping of the cornea and in some cases vision that is less clear than before the surgery, according to the Federal Trade Commission and American Academy of Ophthalmology.

Careful follow-up significantly reduces the chances of permanent side effects, and now that Lasik Vision has closed, the clients with those problems are left with few options. Most insurance companies refuse to pay to correct problems brought about by foreign elective surgery, which is how they view Lasik in general and Canadian Lasik in particular.

Icon said that taking care of patients is a priority and that it is “in the process of personally contacting all Lasik Vision patients who currently require post-operative care or are awaiting surgery.”

However, Angela McCrea, a spokeswoman for the Better Business Bureau of Washington and Oregon, said that she encountered patients at the Bellevue clinic who’d come back for treatment, unaware the clinic had shut down. “There were patients coming to the door not knowing they were closed ... and they had to find somebody else to take care of them,” she said. “These patients are really stuck.”.