This past week i was invited to speak at the AAO meeting in Chicago on one of my favorite subjects— using our advanced technology in order to determine candidacy for LASIK surgery.
The AAO meeting is annual meeting of all ophthalmologists world wide– approx 30,000 doctors descend upon a city for 6 days. Our cities vary, san fran, chicago, Atlanta, New Orleans and Orlando all have large enough convention centers for this meeting, so these are the cities to which we go each year. Chicago is a great city and love the steaks and music there, but 6 nites was a long visit. glad to be back operating today!
I was honored to be asked to speak about elevation topography and the Pentacam. These are the primary scans we use on all patients to give us pictures and cross sections of the cornea. By interpreting these high tech scans, we can find very subtle abnormalities in the structure which preclude the patient from having LASIK. Never before have we had this kind of ability to view small irregularities. Sometimes we can do PRK on these corneas with subtle weak areas, and other times, the patient is completely non-qualified.
My talk was well received. I will be posting the video online in the coming week.
Bottom line– we are very careful and conservative. Approximately 20% of prospective patients are turned away as we only want to operate on perfect candidates who will do well with the surgery! This is our pledge to you!
