Joel Hunter MD Blog

Truth be told, there is no reason to pair “wisdom” and “cataracts” other than the fact that they are both more likely to be found in a generation that was alive during the Eisenhower administration. It just seemed like this title was more catchy than my original, “The Inevitability of Cataracts.” The point is the same in either case, the more years you live, the more likely you are to develop cataracts.

Pretty much everyone has at least heard of cataract surgery at some point. The basic idea is that a cloudy lens inside the eye is removed and a new clear lens is placed where it once was. Actually, that’s not the basic idea of cataract surgery so much as it is the whole idea. When people first hear about Refractive Lens Exchange, wherein the lens inside the eye is replaced with a new lens, the first and foremost question is nearly always, “Is it the same thing as cataract surgery?” If you’re a person who likes brevity and simplicity, then you need read no further than the next sentence. No, it is not the same. For people like me who like details even at the occasional cost of moderate boredom, join me for the next couple paragraphs.

In 1989, someone got their eyes lasered for vision correction for the first time ever. I’d give you the name, but HIPAA forbids it and I don’t know what it was. About 10 years later, LASIK had become an incredibly popular procedure because people had a way, for the first time ever, to get out of glasses and contacts with a quick procedure that had a painless recovery.

When last we met, I was saying that dry eyes is a known complication of LASIK, but that the fuller picture is that dry eyes was a relatively common complication of LASIK, and that we rarely see it now. Since “rare” is vague, I’ll be more specific with a semi-specific educated guess of a number. At Hunter Vision, probably 1 in 50 people who are good LASIK candidates and take the prescribed drops still need to be cured of dry eyes after the three month LASIK post-op visit.

One of the most common questions I get when someone is deciding on whether or not they want to get LASIK is whether or not they will get dry eyes afterwards. I’m always glad when someone asks me because it means they’ve been doing some research on the idea, and more research is always better when people are feeling stressed about whether or not laser vision correction will be safe and/or effective.

Originally, LASIK was done one eye at a time. There were two big reasons for that.

The patients who choose Hunter Vision tend to do a lot of research. We encourage you to do the same and read as many reviews and as much online as you can. To summarize some of the research, here are the top eight reasons most people choose Hunter Vision for their vision correction surgery:

When Henry Ford invented or modernized the idea of the assembly line, it was a huge leap forward for the automobile industry because for the first time, people could get a well-built car for a price that was less than “I am the king of a large kingdom.”

We are so used to the idea now, of people getting really good at one thing instead of having to be good at everything, that it doesn’t seem that revolutionary. But to give the guy credit, back then they didn’t really even have a name for the car. They settled on “car” which I assume was short for “carriage” which itself would have been short for “horseless carriage.” We could easily be driving a horseless to work if history had taken one slight turn in a different direction.

What American doesn’t love the Fourth of July? Not one American, that’s who. No matter what the great citizens of this land may disagree about, we can all agree on how much we love fireworks and how grateful we are for freedom.

I don’t think think the subject of artificial tears is boring, because there is actually a lot of really interesting science behind why different artificial tears do different things. That could also mean that I’m just a really boring person, but I don’t want to examine that possibility too closely because I’m afraid of what I’ll find out. I have a feeling I may uncover why my name is “accidentally” left off of many a party invitation list. It’s a shame too because I have a lot of samples of artificial tears that I could bring.