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There is a red and white house on the corner of Major Mackenzie Drive and Yonge Street. It is home to one of Canada's most avant-garde eye clinics, and inside, Dr. Yair Karas performs his magic. A small soft spoken man, Karas, is a powerhouse when it comes to his craft, and the 20 certificates that line the walls, of his angular reception room testily to a reputation which translates into packed waiting rooms every day of the week. Though there are many ophthalmologists in the Greater Toronto area, Karas is one of only three Metro surgeons who is qualified to do radial keratotomy (RK), an operation which attempts to correct myopia (nearsightedness) by flattening the curvature of the cornea, and thereby improving focus. |
Richmond Hill Month, May 1991 THROW A WAY THOSE GLASSES AND SEE AGAIN BY EVA JANSSEN  Richmond Hill Month, May 1991. |
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The Soviets first performed the surgery in 1972, after discovering
after a young boy who fell off his bicycle and cut his eyes with his broken glasses was able to see perfectly when eye patches were removed.
The United States began to use the operation in 1978, but RK was really only recognized in North America after a six-year study was completed in 1984. The technique involves diamond, or calibrated metal, blades that make up to 32 incisions of various lengths and depths, depending on the degree of myopia. Anesthetic eyedrops are used to numb the eye, and the half-hour procedure is bloodless. Karas has performed more than 2,000 operations since he started in 1984. Back then, he did the surgery in York Central Hospital, where he continues to do cataract operations once a week. Now, however, Karas does the operation in his clinic, to which people from all over the world are attracted by word-of-mouth. Although RK surgery is practiced in many countries, patients with extreme nearsightedness are often rejected by doctors because of the increased difficulty of correcting their vision. The more nearsighted the person, the harder it is to make perfect incisions and create perfect focus, and if the myopia is not totally corrected, patients may need to continue wearing corrective lenses. On the other hand, vision may be over-corrected, resulting in farsightedness. Although there is no absolute guarantee of success, 95 per cent of Karas' RK patients no longer need to wear glasses. To anyone who has to endure the hassles of glasses or contact lenses, the operation is a Godsend. Nick Liantzakis of Mississauga can't hold back his enthusiasm. To get into the police force he must have good (20/40) vision. He's had one eye done, and soon he'll repeat the operation for the other eye. "It's worth the cost," he beams. At $1,600, an eye, the surgery dissuades many who only dabble with the idea of having their eyes fixed, and aren't prepared to spend the money. OHIP doesn't cover the cost of the operation, and Karas says he's not surprised. It would be too expensive to pay for the three million people in Ontario who wear glasses and who might opt for the "cosmetic" surgery, he says. "No insurance company would look at it", he says. "It would be cheaper for the government to give everyone a small car at Christmas." Despite the cost and the draw-backs, people are flocking to the clinic to have the surgery performed. Many of them are in professions which require good vision - firefighters, police officers, and flight attendants, for example - but Karas says more and more of his patients are those who simply want to play sports and go about their daily routine without corrective lenses. Patients must be at least 18 years of age, however, because the eyes, whose development fluctuates as they develop through childhood, need to be stable. But if the eyes of the patient need to be stable, so does the surgeon's hand. "Making circular incisions is like drawing straight lines on a ball with your non-dominant hand," Karas says. "You can't have coffee before." |