I had the chance to attend the largest meeting of Lasik and Cataract surgeons in the country early this April. The American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery (ASCRS) met this month in April. This meeting is always a great one for exchanging new ideas, techniques, and technologies from around the world. There were well known surgeons and scientists from as far away as India that presented their thoughts and techniques on various topics.

One of the things that has amazed me in the last decade is the pace and ease with which new ideas can be shared from around the world. Complicated or difficult procedures which were being tried out in difficult third world conditions were on digital video and able to be shared with thousands of us here in the USA. It was fascinating for me to observe techniques being tried with very simplified technology due to extreme poverty conditions and yet the outcomes achievable were relatively decent considering. The digital video technology available to us today allows to see and learn things which, a couple of decades ago, many would have dismissed as impossible or exaggerated. But to be able to see and share those techniques with the world allows us now to quickly learn and disseminate new ideas in a way that was never possible.

This fact is especially true among younger surgeons like myself that came of age in the computer age. Access to high speed internet for information comes as second nature to us, so of course, we have sought to improve and develop our fund of surgical knowledge through the internet. In the last 5-10 years, I’ve been impressed that new ideas in surgery have been posted easily and readily not only on individual websites but even to places like YouTube. It surprised me actually, a few years back when I discovered that I could find high quality digital video of cataract surgery or lasik surgery on YouTube. I have, in fact, incorporated a number of cataract surgery techniques that I discovered by watching others on the internet.

Many surgeons, young and old, become very complacent in their surgical technique. It’s a natural thing to become comfortable with one set of technology or techniques and feel that they are good enough. As things change, the surgeon will often become reluctant to move ahead with those changes. This mental stagnation is one of the greatest things that a doctor and surgeon must avoid. If you are not constantly evaluating what you are doing and what is on the horizon, your physical and mental skills are deteriorating. As they say, "if you don’t use it, you lose it."

Exploring these new techniques at meetings and through the internet has allowed me to add a host of improvements to my cataract surgeries for better, faster, and safer surgeries for my patients. Similarly I am constantly examining and adopting newer technologies for Lasik surgery. Many Lasik surgeons continue to use the bladed microkeratomes for Lasik surgery and I think a lot of that is fear of change more than anything else. Before I used the Intralase technology for Lasik, I was happy and comfortable using the steel razor blade based microkeratomes despite the rare problems that they created. But after I had adopted the all laser Intralase technology, it was clear to me that there was no comparison. I realized afterward that this was just another example of me wanting to stay in my comfort zone and not make a change, despite the fact that the newer technology was better and safer. I think that any surgeon that spends a significant amount of time and becomes comfortable with both the newer and older technology will agree that the Intralase technology is far superior to the bladed microkeratomes.