Dr. April Wootten O.D.montreal canada - laser eye surgery vision care lasik prk excimer

The idea started out as an accident.

In 1972, a young boy fell off his bicycle in Moscow and cut his eye with the broken glass from his lenses. The cuts were radial, like the spokes of a bicycle wheel. A Russian doctor named Svyatoslav Fyodorov found that the boy could now see without his glasses. Fyodorov went on to develop a technique of making four to eight incisions in the cornea (the transparent part at the front of the eyeball) with a diamond-tipped blade -known as the radial keratotomy operation. Just like the broken glass in the Moscow boy's bicycle accident, these incisions caused the steeply sloping cornea of the shortsighted person to flatten, and the patient's vision would improve.

This operation was first performed in Montreal Canada at St. Mary's Hospital in 1979 by Dr. Kwitko after studying with Dr Fyodorov.

Approval Status of the Excimer Laser
in
Canada and the United States

CANADA

The Department of Health and Welfare regards the use of the excimer laser in photorefractive surgery as an experimental device but has permitted unlimited utilization in treatment of myopia. Unlike the United States there is no limit on the degree of myopia treated. Myopic patients with refractions of -20.00 diopters have been successfully treated at the University of Ottawa Eye Institute and across the country. In the United States approval has only recently been given (see below) for myopes up to -7.00 diopters.

The University of Ottawa Eye Institute has completed the first trial of the VISX STAR for hyperopia from +1.00 to +4.00 Diopters. The results have been excellent with stability now to 12 months. Additional studies are in progress. Based on these results, hyperopia on the VISX laser was released internationally in July 1996.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Only recently has approval been given for photorefractive surgery in the United States. Prior to this approval each site was limited to 50 patients per laser. This restriction did not apply to Canadian physicians in Canada, some of whom have now performed thousands of laser procedures with this new technology.

The approval of excimer laser photorefractive surgery in the U.S. applies only to the Summit laser and the VISX laser system. The FDA approved the laser for treatment of mild and moderate myopia on October 20, 1995. The FDA however has set some limits on the technical components of the procedure until further data can be collected. No such treatment restrictions exit in Canada.

The laser can only be used in the United States on myopes requiring -1.0 to -7.00 Diopters of myopic correction with less than 1.5 Diopters of astigmatism.

Those American patients that fall outside the parameters limiting the use of the excimer laser in United States can seek treatment at a Canadian site.

Link to FDA laser