Two victims talk about the chaos of the mainland eye surgery industry. The picture is the victims’ own pre- and post-operative diagrams of the state of their own vision (provided by the interviewees)
After Ai Fen, director of the emergency department at Wuhan Central Hospital, revealed on Weibo that Aier Eye Hospital had misdiagnosed and misdiagnosed her, resulting in her blurred vision and helplessness to be in a state of sickness, it caused a hot debate and many victims also disclosed their encounters. The Epoch Times reporter interviewed two victims who had similar experiences and revealed the chaos of the eye surgery industry in China.
(Continued from above)
Yuan Wang (a pseudonym), 30, from Huanggang, Hubei province, who works in the construction industry, underwent full femtosecond laser myopia surgery at the Precious Eye Hospital on Dec. 6, 2018, and said he was “tricked by the hospital’s customer service staff to come to the hospital by phone. “The hospital exaggerated before the surgery, misleading patients that there are no after-effects of myopia surgery.” He said, “There was no communication from the surgeon about the sequelae of the surgery or the surgical plan before the surgery, and the informed consent form was not even true (the complications mentioned in the informed consent form did not match the actual complications of the surgery at all).”
He talked about a series of visual impairments and sequelae after the surgery: heavy glare and difficulty seeing, trailing shadows, starbursts, dizziness and visual fatigue, “and also very poor vision, these symptoms had a serious impact on Life and work, and could only rest at Home every day and could no longer continue to work.” What’s puzzling is that after several reviews, Yuan Wang reflected the problem to the hospital, which not only “did not actively solve the problem”, but also “deliberately concealed the condition”, saying that the surgery was not a problem.
The company’s main business is to provide a wide range of products and services to the public. He said, “It was only through the help of a kind ophthalmology professor that he learned that an unsuitable surgical approach and an unreasonable surgical plan, coupled with improper eccentric cutting during surgery, resulted in severe higher-order aberrations as the main cause of the visual impairment.”
“The surgical cutting zone could not cover the diameter of the dark pupil. The surgical record showed that the cutting zone of the left eye was 6.5mm and the cutting zone of the right eye was 6.4mm, while the dark pupil diameters measured at Zhongshan Eye Hospital were 7.8mm for the left eye and 7.6mm for the right eye, and the dark pupil diameters of both eyes were significantly larger than the diameter of the surgical cutting zone.”
Having previously known nothing about the eye, this is when he learned that “pupil diameter is an extremely important factor for retinal imaging and visual quality.” That is, if the patient’s dark pupil is large, and the dark pupil is not measured before surgery, and the traditional surgical light zone setting is used, so that the surgical light zone does not cover the entire pupil area, resulting in a portion of the light reflected from the object entering the eye through the area that has not undergone surgical cutting, and this portion of the light interferes with the light passing through the surgical cutting area, and coupled with the inexperience of some clinicians and Improper operation and other reasons will also cause off-center cutting, which will inevitably lead to an increase in the proportion of phase differences at all levels of the eye, thus affecting the quality of vision.
“This is the main reason for glare, halos, double vision, starbursts and dark vision loss at night.” He said, “The higher the preoperative prescription and the larger the pupil diameter, the greater the impact on postoperative visual quality, so for myopic patients with larger dark pupils, only a larger cutting optical area can be used to ensure postoperative safety and results.” This is when he realized that “full femtosecond surgery is not possible” and that only personalized “excimer laser surgery can do it”.
He searched online for the Chinese Medical Association Ophthalmology Branch on this surgery related to the diagnosis and treatment norms “China Femtosecond Laser Small Incision Corneal Stromal Lens Removal Surgery Norms Expert Consensus (2018)”, and then combined with the medical records, found that the Precious Eye Hospital has a number of violations of the diagnosis and treatment norms, “did not strictly follow the requirements of the clinical diagnosis and treatment norms, preoperative exclusion of relevant contraindications.” He said, “including dark light pupil diameter greater than the diameter of the cutting area was identified as a contraindication to surgery, the size of the dark light pupil diameter is the most important value to determine whether the postoperative period will produce complications such as double vision, glare and halos.”
Yuan Wang believes that the Precious Eye Hospital deliberately ignored the examination before surgery, forcing patients to do full femtosecond this surgery, one has to suspect that completely in order to “improve performance, profiteering”, deliberately using expensive and simply not suitable for patients treatment technology. “As an ophthalmologist, you should ensure the maximum safety and effectiveness of the surgery in order to avoid complications to the greatest extent possible.” He said that patients’ eyes are not “products” and that “you can’t start over when they break.”
In May 2020, he confronted the hospital again, and his surgeon admitted that there were indeed some problems with his eyes and that the preoperative examination was indeed not thorough enough. He was also promised that he would be responsible for his eyes and told to cooperate with the hospital and try a contact lens called RGP, and that he could have a second surgery if the trial had worked. It turned out to be ineffective.
In August 2020, on the recommendation of the surgeon, Yuan Wang went to a private medical institution in Hangzhou, Minghuikang Eye Hospital, to have some tests done (the visual acuity measured at that Time was only 0.3), and the doctor of the hospital told him that it was too risky to perform a second surgery, and that the high order aberration was the main cause of the visual impairment. He was advised to do only conservative treatment with RGP or scleral lenses.
Trapped in despair, he couldn’t help but say, “This surgery is too harmful! It has already harmed a lot of people in China!” Finally, he also found out that the doctor who performed the surgery on him “was not even qualified to practice Medicine“.
After filing a complaint with the health and Welfare Commission, “the Commission now refuses to respond positively to the issue of illegal practice of medicine in hospitals,” he said. He said.
The procedure was done with only one type of femtosecond laser, so it was called full femtosecond. Yuan Wang said, “The hospital called me and said: the hospital has a special offer to trick me to their hospital. I checked online beforehand and all I found were positive reviews. Negative reviews were not visible.”
“The aftermath of full femtosecond laser myopia surgery is a very large group. There are victims from public hospitals as well, and this surgery is very risky.” Finally, he said other hospitals doing this surgery also have big problems, and there are many young people who are victims, “some of whom have given up on defending their rights and just have to go private.”
The corruption and pursuit of profit that occurs in China’s ophthalmology sector, with no regard for the lives of patients, has a long history, only few are able to speak out to the two mentioned above.
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