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The precursor procedure to LASIK was a procedure called Keratomileusis. This was developed by Dr. Barraquer who’s from Colombia. What this process was, was a corneal reshaping procedure using a cryo lave, so it was a freezing treatment designed to reshape the cornea. With that Cryo lave, they would have this partial thickness flap of corneal tissue. It was really a disc of tissue and then that disc of tissue was reshaped. It was placed back into position on the remaining part of the cornea and using a bunch of sutures. It was sewn into place. Now we’ve obviously come an extremely long way from the days of Dr. Barraquer. In the 1990s there’s a husband and wife team, ophthalmology team, who are from Brazil and the wife is an ocular pathologist and the husband is an ophthalmic surgeon. Understanding the anatomy and the physiology of the cornea, the ocular pathologist wife said to the husband, “why don’t you try putting that flat back on without putting a bunch of stitches in it? Because I think it’s going to seal up just fine because of the natural pumping capacity of some of the other cells in the cornea.” Lo and behold, LASIK was conceived.
