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CNN Live Today
Paging Dr. Gupta: Eye Can See Clearly Now
Aired May 16, 2002 - 10:33 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Today's "Paging Dr. Gupta" segment focuses on an issue seen by millions of Americans. For those who are just tired of wearing glasses and bothered by contacts, there is a relatively painless procedure that they say can help you see clearly.
Our own Leon Harris, my own body, my own pal, had this laser eye surgery just six days ago, and our medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta went along. He is bringing you.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: You know, it can be a little scary. Were you scared before you...
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: I don't know if "scared" is the right word. I was nervous. I was even more nervous than I thought I would be.
GUPTA: So, you've got somebody sticking something in your eyeball.
HARRIS: Yes.
GUPTA: That's got to hurt.
HARRIS: You know what, I was surprised, it didn't hurt at all.
GUPTA: It really is all about the discomfort in your mind about having somebody else touching your eyeball.
HARRIS: The kids got to watch me get mine done, and they were freaking out.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're making up for his eyeball having grown too tall. So, we're taking some of the power off, or flattening the center part of his cornea. We're removing tissue, more tissue from the middle than from the periphery.
HARRIS: Now, what is that I smell? Is that my eye burning?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The oxygen in the path of the laser is turned to ozone, and you'll actually smell the ozone, like after lightening.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, he is complete. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You will be in pain this weekend.
HARRIS: That is a promise.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, you will be in pain this weekend.
HARRIS: At least she didn't lie to me.
GUPTA: What's the verdict? You happy you did it?
HARRIS: Yes, I am. In fact, I wish I had done it earlier.
GUPTA: Okay, OK so you're five days out. Let's put it to the test here and see how good those eyes really are. Here's an eye chart. The third line will be 20/20.
HARRIS: OK, here's a test drive of the new cornea.
GUPTA: Yes, right.
HARRIS: OK, let's see -- n, t, e, p, s -- I think that's b, and y. On the third line, I think n, t, e, p, s, b, y.
GUPTA: That's perfect!
HARRIS: How's that?
GUPTA: Perfect vision!
HARRIS: There you go!
GUPTA: Five days, from 20/200 to 20/20 in five days.
HARRIS: You know Dr. Hays just breathed a big sigh of relief!
(LAUGHTER)
GUPTA: Congratulations.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
KAGAN: We have then here the patient and the eye tester. So how -- you went back for another check-up yesterday.
HARRIS: Yes, I had to checkups since I had the procedure done.
Do you hear the music I can see clearly now the rain is gone.
I am glad. I had two check ups since last Friday. Now, it's like today is day six for me, day seven. And the first day almost immediately after the surgery, after the procedure, I was at 20/100. That's pretty bad, if you folks are familiar with -- but two days later on Monday had my first checkup, I was at 20/40. And yesterday, I was at 20/25, and still improving. So no complaints here at all.
KAGAN: So you are a success story. But Sanjay said there are some things that can go wrong.
GUPTA: No question. One of the things you mentioned, Leon, is you looked for a surgeon who had at least a thousand of these procedures. I actually called the American Board of Opthamology, and they said -- they gave some specific numbers. They said find a surgeon with experience of at least 200 procedures, and the reason being that rates of complications will actually drop from 4.5 to 0.9 percent. So that's a significant drop in complication rate, and there are some things also to sort of be careful after the operation.
Leon, again, thankfully, none of this has happened to you yet. But it looks good so far. Some of the complications that can occur, they actually give it an acronym called GASH, which stands for ghosting, arching starbursts and halos, and these are sort of the complaints, that people see little halos or arches round bright lights, for example, sometimes around headlights when they're driving, things like that. These are some of the more common complaints that people do talk about this sort of eye procedure.
HARRIS: I did have a little of that. I did have some of the halos. Arching, I don't know if I had any of that, but I think I noticed the most was light sensitivity, period. In addition to the halos, it was really tough, like the first day I came back here to work, because of the studio lights, its was really tough trying to read and hear. And driving wasn't as much of a problem because of the headlights as much as it was because of the sunlight. Daylight was actually very tough to deal with, and your eyes naturally try to squint and close down, and the harder you fight that, the harder they fight you. That was probably the toughest thing I had to deal with.
GUPTA: Right, you are overall happy that you did it. But you and I are talking about that Web site earlier today.
HARRIS: Exactly, folks, I guess if you're considering doing. I don't know if you want to scare yourself first, but we found...
GUPTA: More information.
HARRIS: More information. Sanjay and I checked out this one Web site. What was the address again?
GUPTA: Surgicaleyes.com.
HARRIS: And this is a place where a lot of people have had some of the nightmare experiences with this procedure, have actually gone to post their complaints and...
KAGAN: And share their stories.
HARRIS: Some of these people, there are actually a lot of lawsuit involved, with some of the stories that you will find on this Web site. So if you want to scare yourself, folks, go check it out.
KAGAN: Get full information. I know you did a lot of research and asked a lot of questions before you did it, and I know folks out there still have a lot of questions. We're going to answer those questions in the next hour.
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