History of LASIK

Baltimore and Lutherville, Maryland

Laser Assisted In-Situ Keratomileusis, better known as LASIK eye surgery, developed over an entire century. Europeans first acknowledged that vision correction was possible, and later, Japanese doctors saw the potential in the 1930s. However, the vision correction theory wasn’t put to a test until the 1970s.

As with most discoveries, the idea of vision correction surgery came quite by accident. A Russian doctor had been treating a young lad who had fallen, causing his glasses to cut his eye. The boy sustained only minor eye damage when the glass shaved a layer off the eye’s outer surface. Dr. Svyatoslav Fyodorov became intrigued when the previously near-sighted boy showed vision improvement. Eventually, Dr. Fyodorov published his discoveries.

Serious research on vision correction began when American doctors obtained funding to produce computer models of the procedure. Dr. Leo Bores eventually brought the procedure to the United States after seeing it performed in the former U.S.S.R.

To learn more about today’s LASIK surgery procedures, please contact an experienced ophthalmologist in vision correction surgery, like those at Katzen Eye Group in the Baltimore area.

LASIK Timeline in America

• 1968 – Dr. Mani Lal Bhaumik and a group of scientists develop a carbon-dioxide laser that later became the Excimer laser (the cornerstone for laser refractive surgery)
• 1978-1980 Dr. Leo Bores imports Radial Keraotomy (RK) into this country and devises ways to account for astigmatism
• 1978 – American doctors realize the potential of coupling the RK surgery with an Excimer laser
• 1980 – Dr. Rangaswamy Srinivasin, working at IBM Research Lab first uses the Excimer laser on other biological tissue
• 1983 – Dr. Steven Trokel of Columbia University, publishes a landmark paper in the American Journal of Ophthalmology, outlining the potential for the Excimer laser use in refractive surgeries
• June, 1987 – Dr. Margeurite McDonald accidently performs the first successful photorefractive keratectomy (PRK) while working on one of the initial studies of patients with blind eyes; one subject miraculously recovers her vision seven weeks after surgery
• 1988 – Dr. McDonald performs first PRK on a sighted eye (within an FDA trial)
• 1989 (20, June) – first patent for LASIK granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to Dr. Gholam A. Peyman
• 1992 – Dr. Palliakaris first introduces the LASIK concept to ten surgeons selected by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to test the Visx laser at ten U.S. centers
• 2000 – an estimated one million people undergo vision correction with laser surgery

Today, faster lasers, bladeless flap incisions and wavefront-optimized and wavefront-guided technology, as well as other improvements, have made the LASIK procedure more reliable than in years past.

If you’d like to consider LASIK surgery for vision improvement, please contact the ophthalmologists at Katzen Eye Group in Baltimore and Lutherville, Maryland.