Laser Eye Surgery

December 12, 2005

US surgeon introduces a new generation laser technology to repair post-LASIK complications

Nashville eye surgeon Dr. Ming Wang became the first eye surgeon from US to conduct studies on the new laser technology to fix post-LASIK problems

(Nashville , TN , December 12, 2005).

Several million LASIK procedures have been performed in US since its FDA approval in 1999. Though highly successful, a small percentage of LASIK procedures do involve some post-surgical complications, ranging from surgical flap complication to healing abnormalities, reducing the patients'vision (in some cases, permanently). These patients suffer from symptoms such as night vision problems and halo, starbursts and double vision.

Until now, the technologies designed and dedicated to treat these post-LASIK complications are largely lacking. No FDA clinical trial has ever been conducted to comprehensively treat these post-LASIK complications in the United States. But, that is about to change.

Dr. Ming Wang, M.D.,Ph.D., Clinical Associate Professor of Ophthalmology of University of Tennessee, Attending Surgeon of Saint Thomas Hospital and Director of Wang Vision 3D Cataract and LASIK Center, Nashville , TN, USA, recently became the first US surgeon to conduct clinical studies of a new generation laser technology dedicated to repair post-LASIK complications. This new technology involves a high frequency laser and a revolutionary treatment platform that are specifically designed to repair complications. Compared with all existing technologies, this new breakthrough technology has the best potential to repair post-LASIK complications such as: decentered treatment, small optical zone and irregular astigmatism. On Saturday December 3, 2005, in Rome, Italy, Dr. Wang and Dr. Giuseppe I'ppolito and a team of Italian doctors successfully treated a group of post-refractive surgery complications.

"This is a wonderful news, to those post-LASIK patients who up to now can not be helped and suffer from permanent vision damage because of surgical complications", Dr. Wang explained. "Even though the percentage of such patients are only few percent, we should always remember that for these patients themselves, it is 100% hence being to have vision restored is of paramount importance to these patients.", Dr. Wang added.

A graduate of Harvard and MIT and one of the few LASIK surgeons in the world holding a doctorate degree in laser physics, Dr. Wang has performed over 55,000 LASIK procedures, including over 4,000 doctors eyes. He has been at the forefront of research and development of new corneal surgeries. "The present laser techniques used to correct problems after refractive surgery is unsatisfactory.  In over 50% of complication cases, the current applications are ineffective", Dr. Wang pointed out. He explained that the reason for the poor performance of the existing technologies when addressing refractive surgery complications is that following a refractive surgery procedure such as LASIK, the physiological status of an eye is altered, which may decrease vision even with glasses after surgery. All present technologies were initially designed for healthy eyes, and when applied to treat complications, the success rate is low.

Dr. Wang believes that the new technology that he is introducing to US is superior than any of the existing technologies since the new method has been specifically developed to treat post-LASIK complications. For example, in an initial LASIK treatment, decentered treatment sometimes occurs, and is not easily treatable with any of the existing technologies. This is because, in an eye with a decentered treatment, the eye ball is rotated to adapt the decentration and hence a secondary repairing surgery can not only not correct problem but also can even make it worse by adding mistake on top of mistake in treating rotated eye. In contrast, with this new breakthrough technology, the doctors identify the original visual axis of the eye before the primary LASIK treatment. The eye is then is realigned in the original correction alignment and decentration much more effectively corrected.

Dr. Wang is working with Dr. Tracy Swartz of Wang Vision 3D Cataract and LASIK Center and Dr. I'ppolito and setting up the first US FDA clinical trial to correct post-refractive surgery complications. Wang Vision 3D Cataract and LASIK Center will become the national coordinating center for the FDA clinical trial.

"When I graduated from medical school, like all other graduating students, we had the Hippocratic oath in which we vowed to "do no harm" to our patients. This new revolutionary technology significantly enhanced our capability of accomplishing that, since even if a complication occurs in a LASIK procedure, we can correct it, making LASIK a much safer procedure", Dr. Wang said.

For information regarding this new procedure to treat post-LASIK complications, please contact Alanna J. Napier, 615-480-3816, Public Relations Director, N House Advertising and Marketing, LLC.