Specialists tout new medical equipment as key to precision and affordability

Hussain Abdul-Hussain
Daily Star staff

Glasses and contact lenses may become a thing of the past for Lebanese, with the American University Medical Center introducing on Tuesday an excimer laser to correct nearsightedness, farsightedness and astigmatism.
“Our hospital has acquired a state-of-the-art excimer,” Johnny Khoury, director of AUMC’s refractive surgery division, told The Daily Star. “I’ve been working on different machines since 1994, but with this excimer … precision is maximized.”
Unveiled at a Tuesday news conference, the new laser not only corrects sight-refractive errors, but also provides wide-area ablations that minimize the chances of halos and glare.
The “latest-generation” machine is also equipped with an eye tracker that enables the team at AUMC ­ the first hospital in the region to offer laser correction for refractive sight error ­ to precisely treat eyes regardless of their movement during the operation.
With a cost between $800 and $1,200, Khoury said the operation “should be affordable to most people … who want to correct their eyesight.”
But the excimer is not a solution for all sight errors.
“In some cases, we will dismiss patients with eyesight that we think cannot be treated,” explained Baha Noureddine, the division’s assistant director.
“The focal point of our work is dealing with the cornea,” Noureddine said.
The excimer can treat myopia, or nearsightedness, for instance, by dissolving the tissue in the center of the cornea, thereby flattening it so light rays are focused directly on the retina, instead of in front of it.
For hyperopia, or farsightedness, the laser dissolves tissue around the outside of the cornea to make it steeper, reversing the process so light rays are directly focused on the retina instead of behind it.
“Even (for) those patients who have astigmatism, the new machine can dissolve the tissue where the cornea is uneven so that light rays are not distorted,” Khoury explained.
He also dismissed concerns about side effects, saying laser surgery was an easy operation lasting no longer than a few seconds per eye.
“Most patients are able to return to their normal activities on the day following the operation,” he said.
For many people, contact lenses may cause irritation or allergic reactions. “That is when correction of sight become a necessity,” Khoury said.
He also said staying in Lebanon for eye surgery was a better option than traveling abroad, as was necessary in some cases before the introduction of the new excimer.
“I don’t want to brag, but we are better than 95 percent of the centers in the United States,” he said, citing the working environment at the medical center and the expertise his team has accumulated over the years.

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