Mike:
Just a couple weeks ago the popular magazine show on NPR (can't remember the name) aired a morning broadcast about laser vision, focusing (no pun intended) on a man who did indeed experience near blindness. All of his normal, daily routines come to a stop at night because he can't see well enough to acomplish the most simple tasks in his well lit home.
Interesting story. It's a little hard to speak to this without the facts. What were the underlying co-morbidities? What was the severity of the previous visual deficit? Which of the actual procedures were used, and was there a deviation from the standard of care? I don't know about his "near-blindness", but when I had my surgery, it was the practice to do one eye at a time, so that had there been some unforseen problem, it would have been restricted to one eye. Was the patient already blind in the other eye?
Apart from the facts, a better way to view most of our activities is based on a Risk/Benefit ratio. Most of us choose to drive cars, fly in planes, buy Q, have warts on our foot removed because we reckon the benefits far outweigh the risks. Occasionally we're wrong, such as when it is our plane that encounters trouble. Pointing out the 1/million isn't quite fair. The real question is what is the prevalence of severe visual loss with this eye surgery. If it is 1/1000, then that is alot; if 1/500,000 then that is very low and acceptable.
Maybe Joel Yagoda can help us out on this one. However, I suspect this eye surgery wouldn't be spreading like wildfire if the risks weren't low. And again, doing one eye at a time would seem to prevent bilateral blindness.
Stan |
