Surgery focuses the eyes of troops
Published 9:00 pm Saturday, September 25, 2004
FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. – Command Sgt. Maj. Kurt Pinero looked up from the operating table after laser eye surgery and could already make out the pictures on the television screen across the room.
“It was amazing,” said the 45-year-old Iraq war veteran. “It was the first time I could see that far since I was a child.”
After months in the Iraqi desert fumbling with dusty contacts, smudged eyeglasses and prescription goggles, soldiers by the thousands are flocking to get refractive eye surgery. And the Army’s picking up the tab.
“Our workload and number of patients has gone through the roof,” said Maj. Glenn Sanford of the two-year-old Warfighter Refractive Eye Surgery Clinic at Fort Campbell’s Blanchfield Army Hospital.
About 26,000 soldiers have undergone the surgery at Army clinics nationwide since it was first made available at Fort Bragg, N.C., four years ago.
More than 9,000 of the surgeries have been done at Fort Bragg, and an additional 8,000 soldiers at the post are on a waiting list to have the procedure between now and January, when many are due to be deployed.
The surgery is viewed by the military as a way to help soldiers see better on the battlefield, where split-second decisions can save lives. Soldiers without glasses can also more easily use instruments such as night-vision goggles.
In combat, soldiers who lose their glasses are not only a danger to themselves, but also a liability to others who must look after them.
“When you take somebody’s vision from them, it’s devastating,” said Lt. Col. Beverly Land, deputy commander of clinical services at Blanchfield.
Priority for the surgery is typically given to soldiers mostly likely to be in combat. It is offered at eight Army medical centers, and at least 10 other Navy and Air Force medical facilities.
The surgery costs the Army about $1,000 per soldier compared to an average $1,785 per eye in the civilian sector. That’s because the military is not doing the surgery for profit, and does not have to pay expenses such as advertising.
In 1993, the military’s first refractive surgery program started at Naval Medical Center San Diego. The surgery was done on Navy SEALS – many of whom had problems with losing contacts or glasses while parachuting or in the water.
Of 450,000 active Army soldiers, an estimated one-third are potentially eligible for surgery, said Col. Kraig Bowers, refractive surgery consultant for the Army surgeon general. But with its current funding, the Army is only able to treat about 10,000 to 12,000 soldiers a year.
“We look at this surgery as a performance-enhancing procedure that gives us a soldier that’s better able to function and operate,” said Lt. Col. Mark Torres, chief of refractive surgery at Madigan Army Medical Center at Fort Lewis.
