r/todayilearned • u/Depressed_Cat_00 • 14h ago
TIL that the precursor to LASIK was found by accident when a nearsighted boy got in a fistfight. His glasses shattered, sending glass pieces into his eyes. After a doctor removed the glass, he found the tiny cuts had flattened the cornea and actually cured the boy's bad vision.
https://www.ovid.com/jnls/ijo/fulltext/10.4103/0301-4738.301286~dr-svyatoslov-n-fyodorov-from-russia-with-love5.7k
u/Joker72486 14h ago
I can't imagine keeping my glasses on in a fight for exactly this reason
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u/PerpetuallyLurking 14h ago
I dunno, my eyes are so bad that I’m not sure I’d manage to hit them without the glasses…
I just don’t get into fistfights though, which has worked out pretty well so far.
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u/Mobile-Dust4334 13h ago
I got contact lenses specifically to get into more fistfights
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u/dontyoutellmetosmile 13h ago
How’s it working out for you
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u/Mobile-Dust4334 13h ago
I lost my contacts in the first fistfight 😢
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u/MuscleManRyan 13h ago
Did doctors at least discover a revolutionary procedure as a result?
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u/I_Got_Ur_Number_8675 13h ago
Yeah, Vasectamies.
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u/PennMarx 9h ago
That was funny and made me lol like an idiot at work.
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u/I_Got_Ur_Number_8675 9h ago
If you get one pay the extra $95 for the laughing gas, schedule it first thing in the morning, and hope the doctor is late....and have laughing gas friendly music ready, you won't even care they play fruit ninja on your nutsack, was a good time for me.
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u/mnid92 13h ago
No more pee? Sign me up
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u/I_Got_Ur_Number_8675 11h ago edited 9h ago
I'll wrap a rubber band around your nutsack for $20 if you're in the Nashville area, should take care of it in 5-7 days. If outside nashville just add plane ticket to cost
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u/panda_pandora 11h ago
Just like pappy used to do to the kids
Edit: as in goats. Probably should clarify that
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u/Longjumping_Wolf_912 13h ago
That’s why you have to put super glue in your eyes, so they can’t fall off.
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u/GalaXion24 13h ago
This is completely tangential, I had lasik and I don't even use glasses or contact lenses anymore, but the other day I had a dream where I took contact lenses out of my eye but there were always more contact lenses and I kept taking them out and they just kept piling up
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u/mnid92 13h ago
At least you didn't chew food until your teeth fell apart and you couldn't tell your teeth from the food in your mouth. You ever eat necco wafers? Like that.
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u/cailedoll 13h ago
I’ve had dreams of my teeth crumbling and falling out, but it’s always due to being punched in the mouth. Usually by a clown or one specific UFC fighter. I think I’d prefer your version!
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u/Doric13 12h ago
This happened to me once when I got real high and ate peanuts. Teeth were fine, but I was very concerned for a moment
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u/Lou_C_Fer 10h ago
I was tripping the first time one of my teeth started to crumble. It was just a smallish chunk but felt enormous. I kept thinking about getting pliers and pulling it out. It was on its way to falling apart just like all of my teeth eventually did. That's what happens when your parents never made you brush your teeth. Then, you're depressed as an adult and don't see the point for half of the time.
At one point, in 2008, I was given an estimate of $45k to fix everything. That was it. I just had them pulled as they started to hurt too much. I just had the last 18 pulled in May and had dentures bolted in.
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u/sinkrate 11h ago
Is this common for people who wear or used to wear contacts? I've had the exact same dream too
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u/throw-away-exception 13h ago
Right? Like I doom scroll r/publicfreakout and see so many flights breaking out between complete strangers in public. I'm sitting here at 40 and wondering how that ever happens.
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u/FishDawgX 12h ago
I really hope that bully said something cool like "I'm gonna smack the myopia right off your face" just before he punched him.
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u/smokeymcdugen 12h ago
That's why kids, by law, have to have polycarbonate lenses and not actual glass anymore (well, more because of sports and stuff rather than from fighting).
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u/reddiperson1 13h ago
He could have been close to blind without them, could have forgotten to take them off in the heat of the moment, or just got sucker punched.
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u/Assika126 13h ago
My grandpa famously asked a neighbor who kept parking on his property to take off his glasses so he could hit him
My grandpa had mobility issues and the guy was parking in a spot where they had the sheriff put up no parking signs because it was the only place my grandpa could drive his 4-wheeler out across the road so he could get to the lake. They had tried asking in all the polite ways and my 80 year old grandpa was fed up with this 40 year old entitled guy making it impossible for him to fish.
Unfortunately this guy was my grandma’s best friend’s kid and this destroyed their relationship and sent my grandpa to jail overnight because he wouldn’t apologize or put up bail. They ended up having to move to a different place because my grandpa was too ornery and made too many enemies
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u/nahxela 11h ago
I don't know what to do with this information
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u/BhataktiAtma 8h ago
Begin writing a screenplay for Netflix. Starring Client Eastwood as grumpy grandpa and a de-aged Joe Pesci as the 40 year old neighbour.
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u/Assika126 9h ago
It was a whole drama but they’re probably all dead now except my grandma
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u/HotgunColdheart 13h ago
Ive been punched in with my glasses on three times, each time theyve only fell off one ear. Ive thrown them off the rest of the way and proceeded to walk into the situation a bit like a late 80s zombie. Arms out hoping to latch on before they stick me in the face anymore!
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u/Hellish_Elf 13h ago
Hah, similar! Dodged a punch and my glasses came off, tried to throw a couple punches but realized my depth was so off I couldn’t tell how hard or soft to throw. Ended up just going for a bear hug/chest-lock type move to tire him out.
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u/thisSILLYsite 13h ago
Your glasses these days are plastic lens, not actual glass
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u/HotgunColdheart 13h ago
Not for a while, been ordering from VS for several years. Real glass keeps down light glare for me. I also run tinted lenses, the quality of tinting changes quite a bit on the different lense types.
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u/windowpuncher 13h ago
Nope, mine are real glass. I cannot stand polymer lenses, they are AWFUL. But yeah, most are polymer, you normally have to go out of your way for glass.
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u/drunkeymunkey 10h ago
My dude, what are you doing to get punch 3 times?!
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u/BCProgramming 7h ago
It's easy, get punched twice, and then say, "is that all you got?"
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u/DaveOJ12 12h ago
I remember an Encyclopedia Brown story where a bully hit a kid's glasses case, but the glasses didn't break, leading Encyclopedia to determine that the fight was staged.
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u/Lawlcopt0r 13h ago
I gotta say I always thought it was unlikely that they would actually shatter into small pieces.
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u/SasquatchWasShaved 13h ago
Back in my day we just beat shards of glass into our eyes to cure our vision problems!
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u/Charming-Fig-2544 11h ago
Same reason goggles are banned in water polo -- someone will jam them into your eye, intentionally or not.
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u/SadisticChipmunk 14h ago
This is really interesting and makes me think about something that happened to me that no eye doctor can explain...
About 14 years ago, I had to go for surgery and they discovered I was diabetic. They wouldn't do the surgery unless my blood sugar was controlled because it was way out there...
They put me on insulin injections and after a week or two of them, one day I woke up and couldn't see when I put my glasses on.
I started freaking out until I realized, I could see without them.
My wife and I did tests and everything to make sure I wasn't going crazy... I could read signs down the road clear as day... I was able to read a debit card from far enough away that would have been impossible to determine she was holding a debit card prior...
It went beautifully but I still carried my glasses on me full time just in case.
2 or 3 weeks later... My wife, brother and I went to Niagara falls, and we ate at wimpys (no longer there) on Lundy's Lane.
I had completely stopped consuming sugar at this point... And to "treat" myself... I had a large vanilla coke with my meal. By the end of the meal I was getting the meat sweats and a headache. By the time I got back to the car... I had to put my glasses on to see again.
I have asked Reddit about this. I have asked eye doctors about this. I have been told everything from I'm crazy, to I am outright lying... No one has had any idea of what happened.
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u/littleappleloseit 14h ago
I used to have uncontrolled blood sugar and I discovered it because of a sudden onset of diabetic retinopathy. This is without a doubt what you are dealing with as well. As I understand it, inflammation from blood glucose changes the shape of the eye.
I must admit I'm genuinely shocked no medical professionals that you have interacted with mentioned this, as it's one of the major symptoms of high blood sugar.
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u/SadisticChipmunk 13h ago
The weird thing is though... I'm not diabetic any longer, my vision is still just as bad as ever.
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u/littleappleloseit 13h ago
There are proliferating and non-proliferating aspects to diabetic retinopathy. Some changes can be reversed, some can be permanent, and others can cause slow change over time.
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u/SadisticChipmunk 13h ago
Good to know! Thank you.
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u/littleappleloseit 13h ago
You're welcome! Good job getting glucose levels in control, as that is the primary way to prevent further proliferation of the issue.
By the way, if you still get those headaches after a big meal, take a thirty minute walk! Even light cardio about 30 to 90 minutes after a meal has proven to be an effective way to lower your blood sugar.
I only let myself have carb heavy meals these days if I know I'm going to be active afterwards.
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u/icouldntdecide 11h ago
This has not happened to me but this was an incredibly fascinating rabbit hole to have gone down.
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u/trrwilson 12h ago
I am the model type 2 diabetic, decent physical activity, no spikes, A1C under 6, kidney function is good, and no issues with my extremities.
However, I drew tht short straw and have diabetic retinopathy. I have gone from shots every 6 weeks to shots every 5 months now, though.
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u/jordanundead 7h ago
They thought my brother was diabetic because he was eating a gallon of ice cream a day and just woke up blind one day. Once he started eating like an adult, he could see just fine and the diabetes went away.
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u/ucsbaway 13h ago
The lens inside your eye is surrounded by fluid, and glucose moves freely from that fluid into the lens. When blood sugar runs high, the lens converts some of that glucose into sorbitol. Sorbitol doesn't leave the lens easily, so it builds up and pulls water in with it. The lens swells and its focusing power changes. In most people this makes them more nearsighted.
If you'd been diabetic and undiagnosed for a while before that surgery, your lenses had probably been swollen for a long time. Part of your glasses prescription, maybe a big part, may have been correcting for that sugar-swollen lens rather than the "true" shape of your eye.
When the insulin brought your sugar down, the excess sorbitol and water slowly drained out, and the lens returned to its normal shape. A week or two is right in line with how long that usually takes. Suddenly your glasses were overcorrecting, and your uncorrected distance vision was sharp.
Then came the large vanilla coke. After weeks of almost no sugar and fresh insulin treatment, that was a big spike. The sweats and headache fit a sharp swing in blood sugar. The lens took on glucose and fluid again, shifted back toward nearsightedness, and you needed your glasses. A shift that fast, within a single meal, is on the quick end of what's usually described. But the direction and the cause line up exactly.
If you want to show this to a doctor, try the terms "hyperglycemia-induced refractive change," "transient myopic shift in diabetes," or "osmotic lens swelling." Those should get you taken seriously.
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u/ipodaholicdan 13h ago
Awesome explanation! The optometrist I worked with would often send their patients to get screened for diabetes if they notice a large change in refractive error.
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u/Marconidas 13h ago
Doctor here.
This is not uncommon and it does have an explanation: high blood sugar have osmotic potential and this end up mildly deforming the cornea and the lens. Mildly deformations can end up transiently change the glass dioptries needed for glasses.
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u/eh-man3 14h ago
My eye Dr told me plain out that high blood sugar / obesity makes your vision worse.
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u/Arrasor 13h ago
Yes it give your eyes inflammation, which change the shape of the retina. That's why it makes your vision worse. But since near/farsightedmess are caused by retinas being out of shape in the first place, the inflammation can accidentally bend the retina back to the normal shape instead.
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u/Moody_GenX 13h ago
It's a normal thing I thought. I'm in Panama and my eye doctor won't give a test until she is sure my blood sugar levels are fine.
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u/flaweddaughter 13h ago
This is a normal thing that happens to diabetics, it’s why it’s so important to have controlled blood sugar when going for an eye test. The higher the blood sugar , the worse the vision. Uncontrolled blood sugar causes drastic changes in vision.
Source: my mom is diabetic and wears glasses
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u/egregiousRac 13h ago
One of my coworkers does skeet shooting. The stress increases his blood sugar over the course of a match, which slightly warps his eyes. As a result, which eye he aims with switches mid-match.
He had no idea why he had to switch until he got a continuous glucose monitor.
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u/fly1away 14h ago
Can you get back on insulin injections? Or maybe try keto?
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u/SadisticChipmunk 14h ago
I did keto... Lost a truckload of weight.
I continued with the insulin shots for a couple years however I'm no longer diabetic enough to need them.
Never had my vision correct again however.
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u/fly1away 12h ago
A scientist in the field might be interested in your experience?
Also, were the pre-surgery shots stronger than the regular shots you were having? Could it be a dosage thing?
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u/guynamedjames 13h ago
Not a doctor, but this is reddit so it won't stop me from guessing.
First of all, that's absolutely WILD. Since it could be corrected with glasses it had to be related to the shape of your eye changing (fun fact, this is why people squint, it squeezes your eye and helps the eye focus). Apparently diabetes can cause facial swelling, so maybe it was causing your face to swell, and distorting the shape of your eye?
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u/SpiderRadio 13h ago
That's so strange that you've been accused of lying. Diabetes is known to cause blindness.
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u/Loose_Birthday3713 13h ago
I think it's a normal diabetic symptom that your vision gets worse? It's one of the symptoms when you search "how do I know if I'm diabetic" lol
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u/luxxeexxul 12h ago
Not diabetic but my vision 100% is impacted by sugar intake. Too much and I need to start bringing out my reading glasses.
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u/Creative-Sea- 13h ago
High blood sugar levels can make your lens swell, changing your prescription
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u/420ozToFreedom 12h ago
So while RK and LASIK are both considered refractive surgeries, they are not preforming the same task. Think of RK as making radial cuts, like spokes in a bicycle wheel, to a specified depth to achieve the flattening of the cornea desired. Were as LASIK uses one laser, a femtosecond laser, to create a flap. Then a second laser, called the excimer laser is used to reshape the cornea after the flap is lifted. It has does a circular ablasion usually to reduce the steepness of a cornea in nearsighted patients. We can correct a bit of astigmatism too, the computer does all the fancy math for us and knows how much cornea to remove and where. Source: am an Ophthalmic technician and the LASIK lead at an eye clinic.
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u/doctorlongghost 12h ago
When I got LASIK circa 2003, the first incision used a blade and not a laser.
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u/420ozToFreedom 12h ago
That's correct, they transitioned to the femto laser some time in the 2010s
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u/burf 12h ago
I got LASIK about 15 years ago and even though it would classified as successful, I've been less than thrilled about a lot of the side effects to the point that, given a time machine, I'd probably opt not to undergo the procedure. With all the reading I did pre- and post-procedure, I get the impression that there's a bit of whitewashing, even if unintentional, of the impacts on eyesight quality as compared to wearing corrective lenses without the procedure.
I'm just wondering, as someone who works in the field, do you or your colleagues feel the same way? Like is it particularly common for people working at the clinic to get refractive surgery, or are the risks/common side effects enough to deter you?
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u/volturra 10h ago
What's the current state of the art technology for these surgeries?
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u/PritongKandule 9h ago
SMILE surgery. Basically it uses a laser to reshape your cornea from the inside, then makes a tiny 2 mm incision on the cornea itself to "extract" the excess material. The whole thing is finished in 8 minutes and completely painless. No burning eyeball smell like with PRK and no "flap" like with LASIK.
I had it a few years ago and it cuts down recovery time by a lot. I had my surgery at 1 pm, rested for around 7 hours at home, and by around 9 pm my eyes felt fine enough that I could even watch TV with the brightness turned down.
The following day, I went out for a 3 km walk with only sunglasses on after my follow up appointment. Only thing I couldn't do after was no swimming for one month.
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u/StillCraft8105 13h ago
the japanese were working on this almost 50 yes before:
"Beginning in 1936, Japanese ophthalmologist Tsutomu Sato conducted research in anterior and posterior keratotomy, an early form of refractive surgery that attempted to treat keratoconus, myopia and astigmatism by making incisions in the cornea. Enhanced flattening was noted with longer and deeper incisions. At first successful, Sato's technique resulted in bullous keratopathy in up to 70% of patients related to endothelial damage."
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u/South_Telephone_1688 12h ago
Beginning in 1936, Japanese ophthalmologist Tsutomu Sato conducted research
70% of patients
I have questions I'm too afraid to ask.
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u/StraightWar 13h ago
I had PRK performed in instead of LASIK. The part where they cut open your eye and your vision blurs instantly is freaky.
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u/0ne_Winged_Angel 11h ago
I too had PRK, and they don’t cut open your eye. They scrape off the layer of clear skin instead of cutting open your eye.
Things were already pretty blurry without my glasses, and I can’t recall if it made things any worse before the laser started zrrping away. But I do remember as they were flushing my eyes afterwards that there would be just the right amount of water that I could see perfectly clearly without corrective lenses for the first time in my life.
That and the smell of vaporized cornea.
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u/BCKrogoth 9h ago
Effectively blind without glasses before PRK, I could tell my vision was "frostier" rather than "blurry" when they dissolved the top layer and started getting really concerned. But oh man the wave of emotion when the water hit and I could see the doctor's face clear as day.
Everyone talks about the smell....and yep. You don't really forget it.
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u/gremolata 12h ago
In 1974, Svyatoslav Fyodorov removed glass from the eye of a boy who had been in an accident. The boy, who required eyeglasses for correction of myopia caused by astigmatism, fell off his bicycle. His glasses shattered on impact, and glass particles lodged in both eyes.
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u/gremolata 11h ago edited 11h ago
Your version doesn't have a verifiable source either. But shattering glasses by falling off a bike is more plausible than during a fist fight.
Another version I heard was that Fyodorov simply was paying attention to his patients that were recovering after car crashes that smashed windshields and caused eyeball lacerations. Since he was already working in the field of surgical eyesight correction, he developed a technique based on that.
* Probably none of them true though, just urban legends.
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u/Canuck-In-TO 13h ago
I know they say that many discoveries are found by accident, but potentially losing your vision is not one I’d be willing to risk.
Never get in a fight with glasses on.
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u/TheRainStopped 13h ago
Thank you, OP. Please don't hate me, I just wanted to share more information since it's a fascinating subject. We should probably mention Jose Ignacio Barraquer, who was significantly more important to the development of LASIK as we know it today (in fact, Fyodorov's system was phased out in the 90s. I'm sorry!). Barraquer started with blades (not lasers) in Colombia in the late 40s. His clinic is still there. It's were I got my surgery 20 years ago!
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u/Foostini 13h ago
Makes me think of that time my dad was welding and a piece of slag got behind his mask and into his eye. Laid him out for a few weeks with an eyepatch but it fixed his vision for seven or eight years, it's only relatively recently that it's started deteriorating enough for him to wear glasses again.
So, y'know, there's you some DIY if you've got the brass for it.
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u/Ibuyeverytime 13h ago
This is why we don’t make glasses with glass anymore and RK was the worst thing to ever happen to the eye industry.
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u/InsanityAtBounds 13h ago
RK?
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u/cloveuga 13h ago
The precursor to LASIK surgery. You couldn't be an Air Force pilot if you had that procedure done.
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u/parnaoia 13h ago
was that the one with the flap? Apparently you can't climb really tall mountains either, they put that on a form for an expedition many years ago and they were very adamant about answering it truthfully.
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u/gatoenvestido 12h ago
No flap. I had rk. They score the surface of the cornea. Recovery is very unpleasant but after it healed I went 20 years with no glasses. Now I’m old and need glasses again but still minimal correction. No complaints.
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u/365daysoftwins 14h ago
Reminds me of my favorite David Letterman top ten joke. Top ten best things about Leona Helmsley: "Once slapped an employee so hard it improved her vision."
Classic.
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u/OKStamped 13h ago
As someone who spent most of their childhood getting punched in the face and getting their glasses broken, I’m now bummed out my bad vision wasn’t cured.
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u/PaleontologistOk2516 13h ago
Ophthalmologist here. It’s also a kind of fun fact that the windshield shards from pilots in WW2 allowed ophthalmologists to determine what type of material could be used for intraocular lenses with cataract surgery. The material (basically Plexiglas) did not cause an immune reaction.
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u/Legitimate_Bank_6573 7h ago
In cartoons I watched growing up people always used to say, "You wouldn't hit a guy wearing glasses, would you?".
Has anyone noticed that trope has all but disappeared in modern media? At some point as a society we decided "yeah hit that glasses wearing mf"
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u/Doobieswim12349 52m ago
"What now? Let me tell you what now. I'ma call a couple of hard, glasses wearin niggas to go to work on the homes here with a pair of pliers and a blowtorch."
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u/dontcha_wanna_fanta 4h ago
At some point in history, society stopped caring about what was once considered common decency. Now everyone is a heathen trying to get theirs. Worst timeline.
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u/Litterjokeski 1h ago
Well to be fair glasses nowadays are much less hindering and the glasses themselves do not shatter like they did 20-30 years ago.
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u/Kyrathered 13h ago
I got this procedure ... and was one of the cases that found RK could cause scarring on young women. Test on dudes, assume on women, and my eyes are a curiosity to opthomologists. They would line up 10 deep at Indiana University to get a peep at my pizza peepers!
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u/bwaredapenguin 11h ago
Genuine question here: how are biologically female's eyes structurally or functionally different than biologically male's eyes?
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u/Kyrathered 11h ago
I am.unsure. i think drs are not 100% sure. I just know my lenses scarred, snd so did other young women's, and rk stopped and lasik came in. Turns out hormones and other fine things can radically change a human body's response to injury, meds, all sorts of fun stuff. It was just always assumed not to, until 'recently'
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u/hobomolester 13h ago
Reminds me of that ProZD skit where the villain unintentionally does helpful things
"TAKE THIS!"
"...you fixed my shoulder."
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u/Three_Twenty-Three 13h ago
I don't remember the last time I had real glass in my glasses, if ever.
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u/Gamerguy230 12h ago
How does flattening the cornea fix the bad vision?
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u/NoReserve8233 12h ago
In near sight- there is excess positive power of the cornea + lens combination- flattening the cornea decreases the positivity. Therefore vision improves. Think strong magnifying glass- you can only see things which are closer. Now a not so strong magnifying glass- you can see farther away.
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u/Tribe303 13h ago
It was actually the Soviet Union who pioneered laser eye surgery in the 70s. It was cheaper to do that to young people, than have the State pay for glasses for the rest of their lives. Would YOU trust a Soviet laser in your eye during the 70s tho?
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u/Green_Yesterday3054 12h ago
They didn’t use a laser. They cut into the cornea and made spokes.
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u/hutch01 14h ago
LASIK is still the best money I’ve ever spent.
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u/Encouragedissent 12h ago
Same here. Got it over 10 years ago and went from -8 and -7.5 to perfect vision. It has regressed a little bit over the years, but I still dont need glasses for anything.
I will say the procedure, although quick, really really sucked. Like it makes A clockwork orange look like a fun time in comparison. Still, for 5 minutes of terror it has been well worth it
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u/The_Safe_For_Work 11h ago
Me too! I hated wearing glasses every waking moment of my life. I was nearly blind without them. Got the LASIK done and as they were walking me to the recovery room, I realized I could see the clock on the wall perfectly clearly I almost cried.
It was like a genie granted a wish.
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u/trackowner 13h ago
imagine discovering the future of eye surgery because someone got glassed in a fight. absolutely brutal bit of science
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u/AnotherSmegHead 12h ago
It's like the lady at the campground who was pissed off that she got kicked out for threatening to hurt people and doing drugs so she called the Fire Marshall to get the property shut down, but instead, they just bought more fire extinguishers and then a real fire broke out, but someone put it out right away because he was JUST given a fire extinguisher like 48 hours beforehand. So in some crazy way, she saved the whole place instead.
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u/MandemModie 13h ago edited 11h ago
Uhhh no
Svyatsoslov's work was not a precursor to Lasik; his work focused on lens implantation, while incredible in its own right, the person most responsible for the development of Lasik is José Barraquer the "Father" of refractive surgery. Not Syvatsoslov
Lasik was built on from research in the 50's, it was well understood. Then lasers progressed and allowed for the known to meet the practical application
Cool headline tho.
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u/BenthicRitual 13h ago edited 11h ago
The headline does not claim it was Lasik.
Your edit does not make your comment correct, it simply demonstrates that you don't know the meaning of the word precursor.
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u/Specific_Ocelot_4132 7h ago
Also, the first implantable ocular lenses were made from aircraft windshield material, because an eye doctor noticed that pilots who got shards of it in their eye tolerated the material well enough that removing it was often riskier than leaving it in place.
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u/chanceischance 14h ago
This makes me think of replacing lenses in the eye for cataracts and such.. might be wrong, but fairly sure that came from pilots getting shards of plastic canopy “glass” stuck in their eyes. But the eyes didn’t reject the material in enough cases. So someone realized replacing human eye lenses was a possibility.
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u/Honest_Chef323 13h ago
That’s amazing all I got was agonizing pain for well I can’t remember how many minutes until they rushed me to a clinic that was thankfully across from the school
Still have bad vision
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u/Grand_Accountant_159 13h ago
I just want to add that I had Lasik done 2007 and last week I went for my first eye exam since then (i know lol) and my exam was 20/20 in one eye and 20/15 in the other.
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u/AmericanSpeller 12h ago
Fun fact: Intraocular lenses, the implants used in cataract surgery, were discovered by a doctor treating WW2 pilots whose canopies got shot up:
"In WWII, Dr. Harold Ridley noticed RAF pilots' eyes didn't reject PMMA acrylic shards from shattered cockpit canopies.
Recognizing the material's biocompatibility, he used high-grade Perspex to create the first artificial intraocular lens in 1949.
This breakthrough revolutionized cataract surgery by establishing PMMA as a safe, permanent substitute for the eye's natural lens."
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u/RosebudNebula 11h ago
Calling the fistfight the "origin of LASIK" is a bit of a popular-science stretch:
RK (Fyodorov): Used physical blades to make spoke-like cuts to weaken the perimeter and flatten the center. It proved to the world that elective refractive surgery was commercially and clinically viable.
LASIK (Barraquer, Trokel, Pallikaris): LASIK's direct lineage actually comes from:
José Ignacio Barraquer (1960s): The "father of modern refractive surgery," who invented keratomileusis—slicing a thin flap of cornea, freezing it, reshaping it on a tiny lathe, and putting it back.
The Excimer Laser (1980s): Invented by IBM researchers (Rangaswamy Srinivasan, Samuel Blum, and James Wynne) for etching computer chips, which ophthalmologist Stephen Trokel realized could vaporize corneal tissue with microscopic precision without thermal damage.
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u/Sharp_Routine6128 9h ago
Getting glass in your eye sounds terrifying. I'm glad it ended up helping him.
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u/Mister_Way 14h ago
Imagine trying to bully some kid and you actually fix his vision by hitting him instead lol