Word: fyodorov
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...film Sleeper, Woody Allen awakens from a deep-freeze snooze and finds himself in the 22nd century, surrounded by doctors. Peering through his glasses, Allen locks eyes with a doctor who is similarly bespectacled. Svyatoslav Fyodorov, an eminent Soviet eye surgeon, saw the film while visiting New York, and was disturbed by this myopic vision of the future: "It's not logical, I thought. So I wondered how we could avoid wearing glasses." That concern led Fyodorov to develop a radical new treatment for nearsightedness called radial keratotomy...
...Moscow Research Institute of Eye Microsurgery, reported on his eight years of experience with R/K surgery. More than 19,000 doctors and technicians from 81 countries had gathered at a joint meeting of the International Congress of Ophthalmology and the American Academy of Ophthalmology (A.A.O.) to hear about Fyodorov's controversial technique and scores of other important innovations in eye care...
...presentation on R/K by the gregarious Fyodorov was eagerly anticipated, especially by those U.S. doctors who practice his technique in the face of skepticism from their colleagues. The procedure takes only 15 minutes. First, the patient's eyes are anesthetized with eyedrops. Next, the cornea, the clear outermost portion of the eye, is marked with six to 16 lines radiating outward from the pupil, like spokes of a wheel. Finally, careful incisions are made along each line, altering the shape of the cornea and changing the spot at which light is focused inside the eye. In nearsightedness, light...
...audience of 500 specialists listened closely, Fyodorov, speaking in a thick Russian accent, described how his clinic does 20 to 25 operations a day. Fyodorov has performed more than 3,000. In 96% of his patients with moderate myopia, Fyodorov claimed to have improved vision to somewhere between 20/15 and 20/40, obviating the need for glasses. In patients with more severe myopia, he reported an Fyodorov 84% success rate. The surgeon declared that he had never lost an eye and had encountered complications in only three cases (two patients with excessive scarring and one with infection...
Nonetheless, the A.A.O. has expressed fears about the "safety and efficacy" of R/K, much to the annoyance of Fyodorov, who says, "They are afraid of new technology." Bores attributes the resistance to a bias against new procedures espoused by doctors in private practice, as opposed to those "in the hallowed halls of academe." Among the A.A.O.'s concerns about R/K is the fact that results can vary widely from surgeon to surgeon. In addition, little is known about the long-term impact of R/K: patients may ultimately be high-risk candidates for cataracts or other problems. "R/K decreases...