FDA approves mobile laser for eye surgery

Web posted April 11, 1997

Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) - A popular new laser treatment for nearsightedness is taking to the road - in a new mobile surgical truck to let rural eye doctors who can't afford to buy their own laser rent one for a day.

The Food and Drug Administration said Thursday it had approved the first portable eye-laser system, the 18-wheeler MobilExcimer mobile surgical suite.

It contains Visx Corp.'s excimer laser, one of two lasers with FDA approval to treat nearsightedness. But those $500,000 lasers are so large and sophisticated that until now no one thought they would work after traveling over bumpy roads.

So LaserVision Centers of St. Louis had the MobilExcimer custom-built to properly cushion the laser.

The idea, said LaserVision Chairman Jack Klobnak, is to drive to hospitals in areas where doctors have too few patients to justify buying their own laser. Eye surgeons previously trained to perform this photorefractive keratectomy, or PRK, can operate inside the MobilExcimer.

PRK takes only a few minutes. A blast of intense light from a laser helps reshape people's corneas to see better at a distance.

While PRK usually works well, patients sometimes wind up needing reading glasses, or experience glare or other problems, the FDA warns. It is only for mild to moderate nearsightedness in certain patients.

LaserVision did not immediately announce where the first MobilExcimer surgery will be performed later this month. Nor would it divulge the doctors' rental fee.

Patients typically pay $1,500 to $2,000 per eye for PRK.

More than 500 U.S. doctors have asked about using the MobilExcimer, Klobnak said. One that began operating in Canada last year performed more than 800 treatments, he said.