On air personality Drew Olson of ESPN Radio Milwaukee’s D-List fame underwent Lasik at Hale Vision on 5/2/07. Drew is doing great following his surgery and is thrilled about joining the “Free World”, a world free of glasses and contact lenses. Listen to Drew weekday mornings between 9Am and Noon on ESPN at 1510 Days / 1290 Nights.

http://www-nmcsd.med.navy.mil/news/news_view.cfm?nrid=258

Read the details in this article at Science Daily.

C.H. asks if Grave’s Disease disqualifies a person from having Lasik. Not necessarily. Grave’s disease can be considered auto-immune in nature thus making one’s overall immune system slightly suspect for healing purposes. If Grave’s has caused the eyes to protrude, often making blinking abnormal, or if there is unusual dryness from the Grave’s, then this could be a problem. But if the Grave’s is mild, inactive, requires little on no medication to control, isn’t causing any eye problems currently and vision is stable, then there may not be any problem at all. It’s worth coming in for a consultation for a closer and discussion. If there are significant medications involved, then it would be best to call in and inform of these prior to coming for a consultation. Most likely things will work out just fine.

Frank Asks: Interested in Technis Iol Z9000. They make remarkable claims on restoring full functional sight. Your comments please.

The Technis intraocular lens was the first to employ the concept of higher order aberration correction into an IOL. This is similar, in a limited way, to what we try to do with our wavefront guided Lasik treatments. The cornea and the natural lens have certain amounts of spherical aberration. For years, standard lenses used after cataract removal have not addressed these factors. The Technis did. There were tests that indicated that this improved contrast sensitivity and overall night vision. Most of the manufacturers have or are in the process of making similar lenses available. This type of lens is not necessarily for everyone as some eyes may not need a fixed amount of spherical aberration correction, so there are several different lenses available with different amounts of correction in them. It is important to seek a refractive type surgeon involved in cataracts (lens removal) versus a cataract doctor trying to adjust to refractive surgery concepts.

Dr. Hale just returned from Irvine, California ( in the “OC”), where on September 23, 2006 he became one of the first ten physicians certified to train other physicians on the use of the Intralase femtosecond laser system.  This charter group of physicians were selected from more a thousand currently using this advanced laser system to create corneal flaps for the Lasik procedure.  Dr. Hale is also one of a small number of physician trainers on the Visx excimer laser system, the second step of the Lasik procedure.  It is this commitment to ongoing education and participation that has kept Hale Vision a leader in refractive surgery for over twenty years.

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2006/02/ia_vision_improvement.html

Brenda asks: “When will the acrylic multi-focal tecnis iol be avalible in the United States”, “this is the one that interests me”. I don’t blame you Brenda, I too think this lens has great potential as the Tecnis monofocal is a very good lens with better night driving characteristics than most other IOLs. I also like the acrylic material for lens implants. Now, many of these lenses will end up with similar features eventually as that’s the way technology works and as far as when the FDA will approve the Tecnis multi-focal, no one outguesses the FDA, and some people have gone to jail trying to. I don’t think it will be a long time, and very possibly worth waiting for.

Dr. Hale was invited to lecture on the advanced technologies of the new Visx Star S4 IR system at the Spring meeting of the American Society of Cataract & Refractive Surgery in San Francisco on March 19th, 2006. The discussion was about refinements of the techniques for most effectively using the new Iris Registration system on the Visx laser. He will be speaking in London on similar topics this fall for the European Society of Cataract & Refractive Surgery.

ESPN Radio Milwaukee morning host Bill Johnson had Lasik at Hale Vision on Wednesday March 8, 2006. Bill had IntraLasik, utilizing the Intralase to make a blade-free flap and CustomVue reshaping using the Visx Star S4 IR, Iris Registration system. He was doing great with 20/15 vision the next morning. See the photos at the gallery on ESPN Milwaukee’s website at www.espnmilwaukee.com.