Eye surgery first for Spire Gatwick Park Hospital (From Redhill And Reigate Life)

Eye surgery first for Spire Gatwick Park Hospital

12:51pm Monday 14th December 2009

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A surgical procedure hailed as the biggest breakthrough in eye surgery for 60 years has been carried out at Spire Gatwick Park Hospital.

NHS consultant ophthalmic surgeon Mr Bobby Qureshi, one of the UK's leading eye surgeons and medical director of the London Eye Hospital, recently carried out the first ever Light Adjustable Lens (LAL) implant surgery in the UK.

Mr Qureshi is the only UK surgeon to be trained to use Calhoun Vision's LAL implants.

The LAL has been greeted as probably the greatest leap forward in lens implant technology since the first implant was used 60 years ago.

It has been described as the most technologically advanced implant now available, with the capacity to be altered after surgery to give the best vision possible for each individual eye without the need for glasses.

Mr Qureshi said: "This is probably the biggest breakthrough in cataract surgery for decades.

“I feel so fortunate to be pioneering it in the UK."

He said: “"We have the potential here to change patients' vision to how it was when they were young.

“The change is so accurate that we can even make the lens bifocal or varifocal, so as well as giving them good vision at distance, we can give them good vision for reading."

About 60% of people over the age of 60, and quite a few younger, are affected by cataracts, and almost everyone will develop a cataract if they live long enough.

The LAL, developed in the US by a team of Nobel Prize-winning scientists, is a new type of lens that can give a patient "HD vision" after it has been inserted into the eye.

Through non-invasive adjustment after the surgery, it is possible to give patients 20/20 vision without glasses, and for the first time in the history of eye surgery, microscopic imperfections in the eye that can limit vision can now be corrected.

Mr Qureshi, who trained and worked at London's Moorfields Eye Hospital, one of the world's leading eye centres, is one of only a handful of specialists in the UK trained in corneal surgery and refractive surgery.

He has helped thousands of patients across the UK, has pioneered multi-focal lens implants and specialises in cataract surgery.

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