Letter to Salon

[bobquasit]

I wrote this as a response to an article on Salon about someone who had LASIK surgery and ended up with terrible problems.

I have to admit that this letter fascinated me. My wife has been urging me to get LASIK for quite a while now, and I've always flatly refused.

Why? Because even though I'd never heard a word about problems with LASIK surgery until I read this letter, I suspected that it ran a risk of causing serious problems.

If you look at the history of modern medical treatments, you'll notice something pretty quickly: it takes decades to perfect the techniques, or to be sure that the medications are safe.

Knee replacement, for example. Early versions of the procedure weakened the surrounding bone so that no additional replacements could be made, and the replacements themselves had a limited lifespan. When they wore out, no new ones could be installed, and the patient was stuck in a wheelchair for life.

Victorian doctors used to surgically remove large quantities of intestine for almost any reason at all.

Tonsillectomies used to be incredibly common. Now they're rather rare. Why? We've learned that they're usually unnecessary.

Circumcision is yet another procedure which is now seen as of questionable use by many doctors, although of course that's hardly a new procedure.

And don't get me started on the medications: Fen-phen. Vioxx. Thalidomide. Diethystilbesterol (DES). All of them clear lessons that it's a bad idea to trust ANYTHING new in medicine unless you have no other choice. Wait until it's been practiced or prescribed for at least ten years, unless you're dying.

While I'm at it, I have to mention surgery in general. TV has fostered a completely ridiculous impression of what surgery is - it's like a child's view of what it's like to be shot, which was wonderfully portrayed in Steve Martin's "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid" when the heroine sucked the bullet out of Steve's bicep and put a band-aid over the neat little hole that was left.

Childbirth, surgery...on TV it's all over and recovered from within five minutes, because the show is only 30 or 60 minutes long. One minute the patient is under the knife, the next they're up and smiling, fully recovered.

But the truth is that when you undergo surgery your body is cut open, and you'll feel that for months if not years. Too often, people don't understand how serious surgery is until it's too late.

The LW made a natural mistake. Now s/he has to live with the consequences. But one benefit s/he can take from this experience is to be much more suspicious of new medical procedures, and to investigate thoroughly. I hate to say it, but ten seconds spent on Google looking for "LASIK problems" would have spared him or her a lifetime of discomfort and disability.

As for the friend...of course he didn't mean for this to happen. And it wouldn't be fair to punish him because the surgery went bad. But a friend who bullies and belittles, for whatever reason, doesn't sound like a great friend to me. I've been there, and I know that sometimes that sort of thing is done out of friendship, but even so I think it's out of place.

Comments

[tonysalieri.livejournal.com]

Yup,

My Dad was an opthomologist for the past 25+ years. He is mostly retired, but does some clinic work, and teaching Doctors for their Board exams.

He has steadfastly refused to do RK and LAISK since their introduction. When I asked him back in the early 90's why he didn't do RK, when his ex-partner was raking in the big bucks, he said "Cutting an eyeball almost in half is going to end up in disaster. Maybe they don't see it now, but in 10 years, trsut me."

10 years later, the first RK "blowouts" started occuring, from people getting into car accidents, and their now weakened eyes going..well..pop.

He also saw enough botched LASIK procedures to warn him off that. People who could see 20/20 with glasses, get it done, screwed up, and no amount of glasses are able to fix their now screwy vision anymore. They've permenently screwed up their eyes.

[bobquasit.livejournal.com]

Thanks for confirming my suspicions. What's "RK", though?

Personally, I'm happy to wear glasses. They really DO make people look more intelligent, and I need all of that that I can get. Although Teri swears that they make me look older. Fortunately, I don't care how old I look. :D

[tonysalieri.livejournal.com]

RK is Radial Keratotomy, a procedure they used to do more back in the pre-LASIK days. It essentially involves using a diamond knife to make radial cuts into the eye, thereby flattening the cornea, and improving vision. It's not as predictable as LASIK though, and has a tendancy to permenantly weaken the entire orb (as people later found out rather gruesomely.)

I don't think anyone bothers with RK anymore though.

[klyfix.livejournal.com]

Hmmm.

I've just objected to the idea of having Death Rays shot into my eyes, well, that and not being anywhere near able to afford such a luxury.

Now as far as TV and surgery, well, maybe you should watch "House"; on average the patient is nearly killed at least twice and I'm not sure we ever see one walk out of the hospital on their own power. :) Okay, really, the only reason to watch that show is Hugh Laurie; he's good but the stories are pretty much absurd and the other characters aren't all that interesting.

[bobquasit.livejournal.com]

You should read the other letters that people wrote in response to that article; some of the stuff is bone-chilling, with the flaps cut in their eyes turning inside-out, for example. Makes me want to scream.

I'd try almost ANYTHING else before I let anybody do anything to my eyes!

As for Hugh Laurie, I'll never get over the idea of one of England's greatest comic actors playing the lead in a crappy American drama. Never. He should be playing Stupid Prince Ludwig! :D

[klyfix.livejournal.com]

On Hugh Laurie: I half-expect that part of the reason he took this gig was that he didn't want to be nothing but a wacky comic actor. Of course I'm pretty sure that the massive amount more he's getting paid in the US than he likely would get in the UK was a big factor also, but consdiering the somewhat odd casting I have to figure that he quite deliberately chose to take a dramatic role. And he's good, actually; it's the rest of the show that is flawed.