This was also the year that saw the development of wavefront analysis to map a patient’s prescription (which is as unique as a fingerprint). Four years later, in 1999, the United States approved LASIK. Shortly after, Canada approved the excimer laser for use in PRK treatments, 1991, and then the United States followed suit in 1995. By creating this flap, patients experienced less discomfort and a faster recovery. Instead of working on the corneral surface, they used a microkeratome blade to cut a thin flap in the cornea to zap the tissue underneath (with the laser) and replace the flap like a natural bandage. The pair developed two types of what was known as ‘Flap and Zap’. In 1990 two European doctors enhanced PRK procedures by developing what would become known as LASIK. In addition to all that, she has won numerous awards for her work and was the first female president of the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery and the International Society of Refractive Surgery. In 2003 she was the first person in North America to perform Epi-LASIK, and also conducted the first wavefront-based laser surgeries in the United States. Not only was she the first person to perform a successful PRK procedure, but in 1993 she was the first to use the procedure to treat farsightedness. McDonald’s career is celebrated by Opthamologists worldwide. The year was 1987 and her name was Marguerite McDonald. While nothing immediately came from these experiments, one of his colleagues would later use Trokel’s excimer laser theory in the very first successful Photorefractive Keratectomy procedure (PRK). In 1985, he published his findings in radial keratotomy. Stephen L Trokel (the aforementioned researcher at Columbia University), found the excimer laser to be extraordinarily interesting and started experimenting with implementing it into eye procedures on animal cadavers, then human cadavers, and eventually on living rabbits and monkeys. Five years later, a researcher at Columbia University would take the excimer laser to the next level. He called this Ablative Photo-Decomposition (APD). In 1980, Rangaswamy Srinivasan, a researcher at IBM, discovered an ultraviolet excimer laser could etch living tissue with precision and without damage to the surrounding area. He would cut thin flaps in the cornea to alter its shape and investigate how much of the cornea was needed to be left unaltered to provide long-term results.įollowing Barraquer’s work, Russian Scientist Svyatoslav Fyodorv developed Radial Keratotomy (RK) in the 1970s, and in the 1980s, and was responsible for the first posterior chamber implantable contact lens. In the 1950s, Columbian Opthamologist Jose Barraquer developed the microkeratome and keratomileusis technique. While laser eye surgery IS an ultra-modern procedure, its history actually starts many years ago with an early procedure called radial keratotomy. If you told someone in 1960 they’d be able to fix their vision with a laser, what sort of reaction would you get? The title ‘ laser eye surgery’, without any background knowledge, sounds like an ultra-modern procedure from the future.

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