Ophthalmology is a clinical and surgical specialty within medicine that deals with the diagnosis and treatment of eye disorders. A former term is oculism.
Far-sightedness, also known as long-sightedness, hypermetropia, and hyperopia, is a condition of the eye where distant objects are seen clearly but near objects appear blurred. This blur is due to incoming light being focused behind, instead of on, the retina due to insufficient accommodation by the lens. Minor hypermetropia in young patients is usually corrected by their accommodation, without any defects in vision. But, due to this accommodative effort for distant vision, people may complain of eye strain during prolonged reading. If the hypermetropia is high, there will be defective vision for both distance and near. People may also experience accommodative dysfunction, binocular dysfunction, amblyopia, and strabismus. Newborns are almost invariably hypermetropic, but it gradually decreases as the newborn gets older.
LASIK or Lasik, commonly referred to as laser eye surgery or laser vision correction, is a type of refractive surgery for the correction of myopia, hyperopia, and astigmatism. LASIK surgery is performed by an ophthalmologist who uses a femtosecond laser or a microkeratome to create a corneal flap to expose the corneal stroma and then an excimer laser to reshape the corneal stroma in order to improve visual acuity.
Eye surgery, also known as ophthalmic surgery or ocular surgery, is surgery performed on the eye or its adnexa. Eye surgery is part of ophthalmology and is performed by an ophthalmologist or eye surgeon. The eye is a fragile organ, and requires due care before, during, and after a surgical procedure to minimize or prevent further damage. An eye surgeon is responsible for selecting the appropriate surgical procedure for the patient, and for taking the necessary safety precautions. Mentions of eye surgery can be found in several ancient texts dating back as early as 1800 BC, with cataract treatment starting in the fifth century BC. It continues to be a widely practiced class of surgery, with various techniques having been developed for treating eye problems.
Refractive surgery is an optional eye surgery used to improve the refractive state of the eye and decrease or eliminate dependency on glasses or contact lenses. This can include various methods of surgical remodeling of the cornea (keratomileusis), lens implantation or lens replacement. The most common methods today use excimer lasers to reshape the curvature of the cornea. Refractive eye surgeries are used to treat common vision disorders such as myopia, hyperopia, presbyopia and astigmatism.
Phacoemulsification is a cataract surgery method in which the internal lens of the eye which has developed a cataract is emulsified with the tip of an ultrasonic handpiece and aspirated from the eye. Aspirated fluids are replaced with irrigation of balanced salt solution to maintain the volume of the anterior chamber during the procedure. This procedure minimises the incision size and reduces the recovery time and risk of surgery-induced astigmatism.
An intraocular lens (IOL) is a lens implanted in the eye usually as part of a treatment for cataracts or for correcting other vision problems such as short sightedness and long sightedness; a form of refractive surgery. If the natural lens is left in the eye, the IOL is known as phakic, otherwise it is a pseudophakic lens. Both kinds of IOLs are designed to provide the same light-focusing function as the natural crystalline lens. This can be an alternative to LASIK, but LASIK is not an alternative to an IOL for treatment of cataracts.
Cataract surgery, also called lens replacement surgery, is the removal of the natural lens of the eye that has developed a cataract, an opaque or cloudy area. The eye's natural lens is usually replaced with an artificial intraocular lens (IOL) implant.
José Ignacio Barraquer Moner was a Spanish ophthalmologist and inventor born in Barcelona who did most of his life's work in Bogotá, Colombia.
Pellucid marginal degeneration (PMD) is a degenerative corneal condition, often confused with keratoconus. It typically presents with painless vision loss affecting both eyes. Rarely, it may cause acute vision loss with severe pain due to perforation of the cornea. It is typically characterized by a clear, bilateral thinning (ectasia) in the inferior and peripheral region of the cornea, although some cases affect only one eye. The cause of the disease remains unclear.
Gholam A. Peyman is an Iranian American ophthalmologist, retina surgeon, and inventor. He is best known for his invention of LASIK eye surgery, a vision correction procedure designed to allow people to see clearly without glasses. He was awarded the first US patent for the procedure in 1989.
Eric John Arnott, MA, FRCS, FRCOphth was a British ophthalmologist and surgeon who specialized in cataracts, a condition which in many parts of the world still remains the principal cause of blindness. He is known for inventing new surgical techniques for treatment of various ophthalmological disorders, and received professional awards for his contributions.
Peter S. Hersh is an American ophthalmologist, researcher, and specialist in LASIK eye surgery, keratoconus, and diseases of the cornea. He co-authored the article in the journal Ophthalmology that presented the results of the study that led to the first approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of the excimer laser for the correction of nearsightedness in the United States. Hersh was also medical monitor of the study that led to approval of corneal collagen crosslinking for the treatment of keratoconus. He was the originator, in 2015, of CTAK for keratoconus, patent holder, and co-developer.
Sheraz Daya is a British ophthalmologist. Daya founded the Centre for Sight in 1996, and works in stem-cell research and sight restoration and correction surgery.
Jeewan Singh Titiyal is an Indian ophthalmologist, credited with the first live cornea transplant surgery by an Indian doctor. He was honoured by the Government of India, in 2014, by bestowing on him the Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian award, for his services to the field of medicine.
Seyed Hassan Ghazizadeh Hashemi is an ophthalmologist and full professor at Tehran University of Medical Sciences, as well as the head and founder of the Noor Ophthalmology Complex.
Post-LASIK ectasia is a condition similar to keratoconus where the cornea starts to bulge forwards at a variable time after LASIK, PRK, or SMILE corneal laser eye surgery. However, the physiological processes of post-LASIK ectasia seem to be different from keratoconus. The visible changes in the basal epithelial cell and anterior and posterior keratocytes linked with keratoconus were not observed in post-LASIK ectasia.
Noel Alpins is an Australian ophthalmologist who developed the Alpins method of astigmatism analysis used in refractive, corneal, and cataract surgery, used in the research of LASIK.
Burkhard Dick is a German ophthalmologist who has specialized in refractive and cataract surgery. With his many contributions to the scientific literature on this topic, he is considered one of the pioneers of employing the femtosecond laser in cataract surgery. In the "Power List 2024" by the publication The Ophthalmologist, Burkhard Dick was listed among the world's most 100 most influential ophthalmologists.
Anastasios John Kanellopoulos is a Greek-American eye surgeon specializing in corneal transplantation, cornea crosslinking for keratoconus, complicated cataract surgery and complicated glaucoma. Widely known for research and clinical contributions in micro-incision cataract, customized laser refractive surgery and corneal cross-linking propagation and most innovations, reducing corneal transplants for advanced keratoconus.
