Publication Exclusive: Twenty years after LASIK and still seeing great

John Doane is a pioneer in refractive surgery who got into the field in its early days in the U.S., having done residency research with Dan Durrie and a fellowship with Steve Slade. He evaluated some of the early FDA LASIK data, and this set him on a career path to refractive surgery.

After observing Luis Ruiz perform in Colombia and becoming contact lens intolerant (for many, the last straw before having refractive surgery), he assisted Steve Slade, who no doubt needed his help, on his LASIK in 1996. John made the astute decision to not have monovision at age 31. It should be noted that very few patients will benefit from monovision if they are not yet presbyopic. He has no regrets to this day at age 51 — still with no reading glasses and 20/12.5 distance vision.

Richard A. Norden, MD, OSN Refractive Surgery Stories Editor

In July 1991, I started residency at Kansas University Medical Center. At the time it was a 4-year residency with a 4-month block of dedicated research. In many cases the research went way beyond this based upon interest. I enjoyed research so it was certainly a plus for me.

During my first year of residency I read an article in Ocular Surgery News entitled “Flap and Zap,” which reviewed Stephen G. Slade, MD’s, experiences with early excimer laser lamellar refractive surgery. At that time, the term “LASIK” was not in widespread parlance. What became intimately obvious was that this new technique could outperform radial keratotomy and certainly seemed like a more patient-friendly form of excimer laser surgery compared with photorefractive keratectomy.

So, during my first 4-month stint of research, I had the good fortune of Tim Cavanaugh, MD, and Dan Durrie, MD, then working at Hunkeler Eye Center in Kansas City, allowing me to analyze their Summit FDA PRK clinical data. I specifically evaluated decentration of PRK surgeries in their cohort of 5-mm ablations to determine at what level the decentrations bothered patients subjectively. It turned out that decentrations less than 0.89 mm from the pupil center did not adversely affect the patients. I was able to present two papers at the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery meeting as a second-year resident and was the first author on a paper published in Ophthalmology.

Click here to read the full publication exclusive, Refractive Surgery Stories, published in Ocular Surgery News U.S. Edition, July 25, 2016.