New Yahoo! Group about Dr. Quawasmi and the Bader Procedure

This group is designed as a meeting place for patients, physicians, researchers, and scientists who are aware of the disorder known as Keratoconus. The purpose of this group is to share your feelings, concerns, questions, and experience regarding the Bader Procedure developed by Dr. Samir Quawasmi of Amman, Jordan. Currently, Dr. Quawasmi has begun a world-wide campaign about the benefits of his procedure so that thousands of people suffering from the disorder have an alternative to treatment. We look forward to your comments. Please stop by and join.

Dr. Samir Quawasmi's Website

My father-in-law has just had his new website published. It contains a wealth of information about his new procedure. Unfortunately, it is only in Arabic at the present time. The English version will be released very soon.

A message from Dr. Quawasmi

My entire career as a physican has been in dedicated service to mankind. With the development of my new surgery, I hope to impact the lives of people around the world. I want to thank my son-in-law for informing you and others about my new procedure and I hope to receive future inquiries from all readers. I look forward to answering many of your questions personally.

The Normal Cornea vs. Keratoconus

Below is a diagram of the cornea in its normal shape and form.

The earliest symptom of Keratoconus is subtle blurring of vision that is not correctable with glasses. (Vision is generally correctable to 20/20 with gas-permeable contact lenses.)

Keratoconus can usually be diagnosed with slit-lamp examination of the cornea. Early cases may require corneal topography, a test that involves making a stereo image that gives a topographic map of the curvature of the cornea. When keratoconus is advanced, the cornea may be thinner in areas. This can be measured with a painless test called pachymetry.

The diagrams below illustrate the difference between a normal cornea and a keratonic cornea.

Dr. Quawasmi has used his new procedure to treat mild cases to the most severe of cases of Keratoconus. Future blog entries will explain Dr. Quawasmi's procedure.

What is Keratoconus?

KERATOCONUS

Keratoconus (from Greek: kerato- horn, cornea; and konos cone), is a degenerative non-inflammatory disorder of the eye in which structural changes within the cornea cause it to thin and change to a more conical shape than its normal gradual curve. Keratoconus can cause substantial distortion of vision, with multiple images, streaking and sensitivity to light all often reported by the patient. Keratoconus is the most common dystrophy of the cornea, affecting around one person in a thousand, and it seems to occur in populations throughout the world, although some ethnic groups experience a greater prevalence than others. It is typically diagnosed in the patient's adolescent years and attains its most severe state in the twenties and thirties.
Keratoconus is a little-understood disease with an uncertain cause, and its progression following diagnosis is unpredictable. If afflicting both eyes, the deterioration in vision can affect the patient's ability to drive a car or read normal print. In most cases, corrective lenses are effective enough to allow the patient to continue to drive legally and likewise function normally. Further progression of the disease may require surgery including transplantation of the cornea. However, despite its uncertainties, keratoconus can be successfully managed with a variety of clinical and surgical techniques, and often with little or no impairment to the patient's quality of life.

SYMPTOMS

People with early keratoconus typically notice a minor blurring of their vision and come to their clinician seeking corrective lenses for reading or driving. At early stages, the symptoms of keratoconus may be no different from those of any other refractive defect of the eye. As the disease progresses, vision deteriorates, sometimes rapidly. Visual acuity becomes impaired at all distances, and night vision is often quite poor. Some individuals have vision in one eye that is markedly worse than that in the other eye. Some develop photophobia (sensitivity to bright light), eye strain from squinting in order to read, or itching in the eye, but there is normally little or no sensation of pain.
The classic symptom of keratoconus is the perception of multiple 'ghost' images, known as monocular polyopia. This effect is most clearly seen with a high contrast field, such as a point of light on a dark background. Instead of seeing just one point, a person with keratoconus sees many images of the point, spread out in a chaotic pattern. This pattern does not typically change from day to day, but over time it often takes on new forms. Patients also commonly notice streaking and flaring distortion around light sources. Some even notice the images moving relative to one another in time with their heart beat.

PROGNOSIS

Patients with keratoconus typically present initially with mild astigmatism, commonly at the onset of puberty, and are diagnosed as having the disease by the late teenage years or early 20s. In rare cases keratoconus can occur in children or not present until later adulthood. A diagnosis of the disease at an early age may indicate a greater risk of severity in later life. Patients' vision will seem to fluctuate over a period of months, driving them to change lens prescriptions frequently but as the condition worsens, contact lenses become required in the majority of cases. The course of the disorder can be quite variable, with some patients remaining stable for years or indefinitely, while others progress rapidly or experience occasional exacerbations over a long and otherwise steady course. Most commonly, keratoconus progresses for a period of ten to twenty years before the course of the disease generally ceases.

In advanced cases, bulging of the cornea can result in a localized rupture of Descemet's membrane, an inner layer of the cornea. Aqueous humor from the eye's anterior chamber seeps into the cornea before Descemet's membrane reseals. The patient experiences pain and a sudden severe clouding of vision, with the cornea taking on a translucent milky-white appearance known as a corneal hydrops. Although disconcerting to the patient, the effect is normally temporary and after a period of six to eight weeks the cornea usually returns to its former transparency. The recovery can be aided non-surgically by bandaging with an osmotic saline solution. Although a hydrops usually causes increased scarring of the cornea, occasionally it will benefit a patient by creating a flatter cone, aiding the fitting of contact lenses. Occasionally, in extreme cases, the cornea thins to the point that a partial rupture occurs, resulting in a small, bead-like swelling on the cornea that has been filled with fluid. When this occurs, a corneal transplant can become urgently necessary to avoid complete rupture and resulting loss of the eye.

Welcome

If you have arrived at this blog, you are probably either interested in learning more about Dr. Samir Quawasmi, his new procedure for treating Keratoconus, or about the condition of Keratoconus. My name is Joseph Andrew Wilson and I have created this blog to share information with you about all three of these subjects.

Dr. Samir Quawasmi MD, DORCSI, DORCPI resides and practices in Amman, Jordan. He is held in high regard in his field and currently balances his professonal career by providing nonsurgical and surgical treatments to clients, providing professional consultation to other physicians around the world who seek his expert advice, and research and development of new surgical procedures that will improve vision for people worldwide.

Keratoconus is a degenerative non-inflammatory disorder of the eye in which the structural changes in the cornea cause it to thin and change to a more conical shape than its normal gradual curve. Keratoconus is a little-understood disease and its progression following diagnosis is unpredictable.

Dr. Quawasmi has developed the BADER PROCEDURE, an innovative approach to the treatment of Keratoconus. The Bader procedure (pronounced bay-dur and meaning 'full moon' in the Arabic language ) utilizes the human body's own ability of healing to correct this debilitating disease and requires minimal invasion of the eye buy the surgeon. With the Bader Procedure, contact lenses, which may cause 20% corneal endothelium loss over five years of use and other complications, are no longer necessary. Rings and grafts are no longer essential as a method of keratoconus treatment and corneal transplant, which has up to a 5 year window for rejection by the body.

Over 200 procedures have been performed by Dr. Quawasmi, without complication. Patient benefits include outpatient procedure, use of local anesthetic, timeliness of procedure, less financial expenditure for the patient when compared to other corrective procedures and corneal transplanting can be avoided as a treatment alternative.