Dr. Hugh Parsons, chief of surgery at Surrey Memorial Hospital, chafes at being called a miracle worker, but to 67-year-old Don Carter and others like him, BC’s pre-eminent eye surgeon is definitely a hero.
“He’s fantastic. I can’t say enough good things about him,” says Don.
Fishing is Don’s first love but he’s into beekeeping, as well, so when he banged his head at work in March 2001, he passed it off as an occupational hazard. Complications set in two days later when he moved his beehives from one end of town to the other.
“Everything went fine and, on the way home, I was having trouble seeing,” he continues. “It was like a curtain coming up. I could see my nose with my right eye, but I couldn’t see it with my left.”
He pulled his car off to the side of the road and called his wife, Fran, to take him home. A little rest will do the job, he thought, but when things didn’t improve, Fran took him to his local Emergency Department. The doctor told him to see a specialist who, in turn, referred him to Dr. Parsons, who, at that time, was working at St. Mary’s Hospital in Langley. Parsons realized Don had a detached retina as a result of his head trauma three days earlier and operated right away. The procedure involved inserting a gas bubble into the eye’s vitreous fluid to keep the retina in place. Don was conscious of what was going on – “you can see the actual procedure,” he says – but it was painless. His sight returned and he now resumes an active life.
“I feel very lucky,” says Don. “He fixed it. My vision came back, almost 20/20.”
Retinal detachment is just one of many age-related diseases that affect the eye. Macular degeneration and cataracts are also common. Cataract surgery has become routine.
“Pretty much 100 per cent of people, as they mature, will end up with some sort of eye problem that will affect visual function,” says Parsons “Probably as you start the middle to late 50s, they’ll be some kind of deterioration with regard to retinal disease. Things like diet, smoking, high blood pressure and cholesterol all play a role, but it’s genetics, too. Almost all my patients will tell me; gee my Mom went blind at whatever age.”
Parsons and his team at Surrey Memorial’s Jim Pattison Outpatient Care and Surgery Centre perform more than 1,600 operations a year. In addition to retinal detachment, the team repairs holes and protrusions in the macula (macular degeneration is inoperable) and a condition called diabetic retinopathy in which diabetics may experience blocked blood vessels, interrupting their sight. Already renowned as a first class facility, the Jim Pattison Centre is about to become even more so.
An ongoing fundraising campaign aims to turn the Centre’s current retinal operating theatre into BC’s primary destination point for the most intricate and delicate of eye surgeries. International manufacturer Bausch & Lomb has determined the facility will be the training site of its most advanced products.
“This partnership with Bausch & Lomb will allow us to lead the country in advancing the treatment of retinal disease,” says Hospital President and CEO Jane Adams.
The most compelling piece of equipment called the Argus II and still to be confirmed with another manufacturer, involves implanting a retinal prosthesis, or bionic eye.
“It’s essentially placing electrodes on the retina to restore vision in patients with advanced retinitis pigmentosa,” says Parsons. “You put electrodes on the surface of the macula and that conducts information to the brain. People go from barely being able to see light to being able to see shapes and numbers.”
If this sounds like Buck Rogers science-fiction stuff, restoring sight to the nearly blind, well, it is. Terrific advances have already been made in retinal surgery and more are on the way. Coupled with extra staff, the refurbished operating theatre will speed up the process – the current wait time for non-emergency operations is 40 weeks – and make the Centre more efficient.
“We’ll be able to see three to five hundred more patients a year and see them in a more timely fashion and, therefore, have a better outcome in terms of preventing the disease,” says Adams. “In retinal disease, the longer you wait to have the retina repaired, the more adverse the outcome. We anticipate the wait list to be dropped by 50 per cent.”
High-tech gear requires money, lots of it. So the Hospital is raising funds. Parsons and his three colleagues have led the way by donating the first $200,000 themselves.
“I thought to myself, gee if we can get this going,” says Parsons, “it would get the ball rolling.”
A February gala, billed as a Bollywood Ball, and featuring South Asian music, food and dancers, raised even more money. To date, the fundraising campaign has raised $ 1,020,000. It is still ongoing. The refurbished operating theatre will be open for its first patients later this year.
In the meantime, commercial fisher and beekeeper Don Carter still reports to Dr. Parsons for semi-annual check-ups. The former patient has some words of advice.
“Just be alert. Be aware of what’s going on around you,” he says, recalling the time he hit his head and his subsequent troubles.
“Get out of denial. It’s natural to think it’s just nothing,” adds Fran. “Speed is so important,” continues Don. “When you have an eye problem, you don’t have a long time to get better.”
Fran and Don have learned from experience that problems with the eye cannot be taken lightly. Statistics tell us that one in four Canadians will develop irreversible vision loss by the age of 75, but 80 per cent of that loss can be prevented through early detection and treatment.