If you are among the tens of millions of patients who have undergone laser vision-correction surgery, you may want to be extra thankful for your Thanksgiving turkey this year, as it played an important role in bringing LASIK technology out of the lab and into the clinic.
Dr. Rangaswamy Srinivasan, credited with developing the laser technology used in LASIK systems, saw in his leftover Thanksgiving turkey a testing ground for his lab’s new industrial laser. He hoped he could demonstrate the laser’s potential as a medical instrument by using it to make clean cuts in tissue without damaging underlying cells.
Dr. Srinivasan has his colleagues had been searching for a proper target for their laser, but didn’t see much promise in the hamburger and other chopped meats available from their cafeteria at IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center in New York. But Dr. Delicate tissues such as goldfish tails and butterfly wings also didn’t fit the bill, but Srinivasan’s Thanksgiving leftovers proved just the right medium.
"Sri got the idea to save a turkey bone with some cartilage on it and bring it to the lab the next day," said colleague James Wynne. "It was a wise choice because the tissue was fairly rigid and the surface was smooth, making it easier to observe the effects of laser irradiation."
They took their 1st laser shots at the turkey on Nov. 27, 1981, and the rest is history. The laser left "clean-looking" cuts on the cartilage without affecting the underlying and adjacent tissue. Fellow IBM researcher Samuel Blum helped further test the laser, and they penned an invention disclosure.
Since then more than 17 million patients have undergone LASIK vision correction and more than 3,300 surgeons have performed the procedure, according to QualSight LASIK.
This year the trio received the National Medal of Technology & Innovation, and during the procedure President Barack Obama reportedly told Wynne’s daughter that First Lady Michelle Obama had undergone laser refractive surgery.
"Imagine, the First Lady’s eyesight was corrected by a procedure for which our turkey experiment laid the foundation," Wynne said. "We believed that the excimer laser could be used to incise living tissue, and our vision turned out to be correct – no pun intended."
The Thanksgiving excerpt from the full LASIK story was contained in a news brief released by The Optical Society in advance of the publication of Wynne’s article, "Excimer Laser Surgery – Laying the Foundation for Laser Refractive Surgery," The article is part of the OSA Centennial History Book slated for publication in honor of the society’s 100-year anniversary in 2016.