Corneal subspecialty: the scope of expert care
Posted by: West Georgia Eye Care Center in Frontpage Article on April 17, 2015
Expertise is the mantra of modern medicine.
Atul Gawande
West Georgia Eye Care Center is the region’s only multi-specialty eye care provider. Why does that matter to you? If you’re considering a specialized surgery like LASIK, you want a specialized doctor performing it. Laser vision correction is performed on the part of the eye called the cornea. Corneal specialists are ophthalmologists whose extra time of dedicated study and fellowship training involved a special emphasis on this complex, intricate area of the eye.
What is a cornea, exactly? The cornea is the translucent, dome-shaped front window of the eye that covers the iris (colored part) and pupil (black dot). It is the focus powerhouse of the eye, refracting the light that passes through it. When a cornea is injured, diseased, or misshapen, light entering the eye is scattered and cannot be properly focused to produce a clear image. Thankfully, expert care is available.
- LASIK surgery reshapes the cornea, thus eliminating the need for glasses or contact lenses for proper light refraction
- A corneal transplant (also called keratoplasty) heals blindness by replacing a diseased cornea with a healthy one donated through an eye bank.
In the United States, eye doctors perform an estimated 700,000 LASIK procedures and over 40,000 corneal transplants each year. A corneal specialist is expertly qualified to perform these delicate procedures.
James Brooks, M.D. and Cynthia Nix, M.D. are both fellowship-trained corneal specialists–the only eye doctors in the region with this distinction. They are on the cutting edge of advanced iLASIK technology and modern corneal transplant surgeries including DLEK, DSEK, and IEK.
Expertise matters. And it matters who you see for your LASIK and other eye care needs.
