Here are some interesting LASIK eye surgery terminology and facts. If you are planning on having this type of surgery it is always good to familiarize yourself with it and the lingo.
Dr. Jose Barraquer from Colombia in 1970 was the first person to develop the Microkeratome, an instrument that could cut thin flaps in the cornea and alter its shape. He is ultimately the one who made this type of corrective eye surgery possible.
This type of surgery is very safe and painless. Patients experience very little pain and usually fully recover within 24 hours. Their vision is noticeably improved as soon as the surgical procedure is finished. Patients are awake during the procedure and do go temperately blind while their cornea is being worked on. This sometimes frightens patients but only lasts for a short period of time.
Here are some terms for your interest.
Laser-assisted In Situ Keratomileusis (LASIK) is a form of refractive laser eye surgery. This type of procedure is performed by an Ophthalmologist and is designed to help correct vision.
Microkeratome – A Microkeratome is a precision surgical instrument with an oscillating blade designed for creating the corneal flap in LASIK or ALK surgery
Eye Surgery – Ophthalmic surgery or ocular surgery, a surgical procedure performed on the eye or its adnexa.
Adnexa – Appendages of an organ.
Refractive – The turning or bending of any wave, such as a light or sound wave, when it passes from one medium into another of different optical density. It is also the ability of the eye to bend light so that an image is focused on the retina, allowing the image to be sent to the brain for processing.
In Situ – In situ is a Latin phrase used in many different contexts and means ‘in place’.
Keratomileusis – A procedure for the correction of the refraction of the cornea by removing a deep corneal lamella, freezing it, forming it to a new curvature, and then replacing it.
Ophthalmologist – A physician who specializes in ophthalmology.
Ophthalmology – Branch of medicine that deals with the anatomy, functions, pathology, and treatment of the eye.
Isn’t medical technology amazing? Just knowing that if you were born with bad eyes that you can go spend a few thousand dollars and transform your sub-par vision into perfect 20/20 should bring some ease to your life. To your heath and to your life – farewell!
By: Jim Grayson
Archive for October, 2009
India: Attractive Market for Biopharmaceutical Companies Looking to Accelerate Their Clinical Trials
October 27th, 2009The Clinical Research Market in India is growing at a very rapid rate according to anyone’s statistics…It is exploding according to all the hype.
For a long time, India has been a hotbed for companies in several major industries looking to outsource and “off-shore” services in an effort to speed development, reduce costs, while hoping to maintain a high level of quality. Today, the process of discovering and testing new drugs is following a similar path and India has a leading role.
There is a tremendous amount of excitement about markets such as India, Central and Eastern Europe and more recently, China. But like any new and exciting trend, we need to buffer that excitement with an understanding of reality. There are tremendous benefits being realized by companies now conducting studies in India, but those companies have also developed an understanding of the cultural intricacies, workforce talent pool, site and study conduct challenges and an improving yet dynamic regulatory environment. Understanding these realities and how to work in them is critical to future success.
India – A Preferred Destination: Why the Industry is Acting on India
As is widely known today, sponsors operating in mature drug development markets including the US and Western Europe are facing difficult challenges in moving their compounds efficiently through the pipeline, whether it be a shortage of beds for Phase I units, delays in contracting and budgeting, or patient recruitment challenges, the costs and timelines associated with bringing new compounds from the bench to bedside is greater than ever before. These issues have forced the industry out of its comfort zone resulting in a rapid globalization process over the last 10 years. Likewise, regions and countries around the world have adapted to and benefited from this globalization.
In very recent years, India has adapted its laws and regulatory guidelines to allow global biopharmaceutical companies access and confidence in conducting clinical trials there. Strong national resources and advantages in medical education and practice, patient populations and the prevalence of 1st and 3rd world diseases have made India not only an open destination, but also an attractive destination. In fact, the well known consulting firm AT Kearney ranked the attractiveness of markets across the world using the US market as the benchmark. India ranks second only to China on that scale and other than population size ranks very closely to or better than China in a number of key categories, including – perhaps most importantly to many companies – the regulatory environment and timelines.
Overall India advantages becoming known:
* Well-credentialed, acclaimed physician base
* Growing market for patent-protected therapies
* Faster, cost-effective studies
* Marketing & Supply Chain infrastructure
* Large treatment-naïve patient population
For additional information on this exciting market, please click one of the links below:
* Clinical Trial and Site Management Services
* Regulatory Guidelines
By: Dan McDonald
How Can a Laser Correct Your Vision?
October 25th, 2009
Not all lasers could correct your vision. Some could destroy it. There are a great many different types of laser, all man-made for different purposes. The one used for vision correction is called the Excimer laser – a name which means little to anyone except the people who first developed this type of laser. They made the word up, from two other words: excited and dimer. The story as to why is not relevant to the exciting world of LASIK.
Eye surgery, like every type of surgery, has been transformed by lasers. The excimer laser which does Custom LASIK, PRK, IntraLase, LASEK, and epi-LASIK procedures comes as part of a system of sophisticated technology and is a major investment for the eye surgeon.
How is a Laser Different From Other Lights?
Laser lights:
· Travel in rays that are parallel to each other;
· Are directional; and
· Have a single vibration.
Lasers are focused lights, rather than scattered like headlights or flashlights. That is why they make good classroom pointers. It’s also why they are excellent for eye surgery, because they can be made to come to a microscopically tiny focus.
Lasers and Heat
All lights generate heat and all hot things give off light. Light and heat are two aspects of the same energy. Some lasers are so hot they can slice through a block of steel. Some lasers used in dentistry and medicine are referred to as “cool” lasers, and the excimer laser is one of those. Cool lasers are both inherently cooler than some other types of laser, and also deliberately cooled for medical use.
Lasers and Color
Since all lasers have just one vibration level, they are a single color. Some have visible colors and some are infrared or ultraviolet – their vibration is beyond our visible color spectrum. Excimer lasers are ultraviolet.
How the Excimer Laser Works
The total vision correction system containing the excimer laser includes a patient bed, a computer and monitor, a tracking device to keep the laser targeted on each eye’s treatment area, a microscope for the eye surgeon to see your eyes highly magnified, a seat for the surgeon, and some tools and implements.
By the time you are on the patient bed for your vision correction, your two eyes have been precisely diagnosed as to their refractive errors. That is the first part of a Custom LASIK surgery, done before the day of your treatment. Your treatment plan is based on two 3-D maps generated by the diagnostic Wavefront equipment. They are microscopically exact maps of each eye’s contours and shape.
The excimer laser is programmed to follow these two maps during treatment, subject to your eye’s surgeon’s control. First a thin flap of surface tissue is folded back on the cornea (front transparent part of the eye), to expose the next layer down, the stroma. Then the excimer laser is directed on the pre-determined treatment area, and quickly vaporizes tiny pieces of unwanted tissue, at pre-set depths.
A New Corneal Contour
Your eye doctor planned the tissue vaporization so as to reshape the cornea. The cornea bends (refracts) light entering the eye, and in a 20/20 eye focuses it on the retina (“camera film”) at the back of the eye. Modifying its curvature changes the cornea’s degree of light refraction.
· If you are nearsighted (myopic), your eye surgeon will use the excimer laser to remove pieces in the center of the cornea. That slightly flattens the corneal curvature, and now light will not be refracted quite so much. You will have clear distance vision.
· If you are farsighted (hyperopic), your eye doctor will remove tissue from the periphery of the cornea, to slightly steepen its curvature. Now light will be refracted a bit more and you’ll have clear close-up vision.
· If you are astigmatic, your eye surgeon will remove tissue in an individual way according to your eye’s particular oval shape, to create a more round shape. An astigmatic eye is like a football, with a lengthwise flatter curvature and a crosswise steeper curvature. After it is made round, light will be refracted in only one way instead of two.
Lower and Higher Order Aberrations
No treatment plan is as simple as the above makes it sound. Many people are both astigmatic and myopic, for instance; and we all have tiny imperfections called Higher Order Aberrations. They are subtle defects like halos around light sources, poor night vision, and ghosting – faint duplicate images.
Myopia, hyperopia and astigmatism are the three Lower Order Aberrations. Custom LASIK corrects both higher and lower order aberrations. That allows you to (a) see more, because you have clarity at all distances; and (b) see better, because none of those subtle defects get in the way.
If you are considering a LASIK procedure, the best thing you can do to obtain excellent results is to choose a well-qualified eye surgeon. The best LASIK surgeons screen their patients very rigorously because it is in nobody’s best interest to perform a procedure on somebody who is a poor candidate for it. So do some homework before you choose your LASIK surgeon, and choose one who has many years of experience and has done several thousand procedures of the type you need.
By: Jennifer Kimberley
