Q: Do you have any special Pterygium patients you'd like to talk about?

A: Oh, there must be hundreds of them. Off the top of my head. I can probably give you three cases that I thought were really kind of outstanding and remarkable. Number one, I had a guy who was a helicopter pilot. It turns out that when they go to repair power lines, they don't have the guys climb up the power lines. They lower them down with a helicopter. He had a Pterygium in he left eye and it was affecting his vision. And he's basically driving his helicopter, piloting his helicopter, looking off to the left. He's got high powered power lines basically right nearby within 100, 200 feet, whatever it is. And he's lowering either equipment or men on ropes down to the structures to basically repair things, as well. So, he’s a very high functioning guy who couldn't see well. So, we did his case and he noticed his vision improved beautifully. It was a lot easier for him to fly. That was a fantastic case. Very remarkable in terms of how functioning it was, His vision wasn't all that bad, but that subtle improvement, the vision made a big difference in his being able to do his really cool job.

OK, the other biggest aspect of a Pterygium that is very, very poorly discussed is the effect on people's self-esteem and self-perception, as well. A Pterygium is a, has a terrible psychological effect on people, as well.

And nobody really understands that except for people who have a Pterygium. They have disfiguring look to the eye. They're typically red. They have friends or family or workers, co-workers, even police, asking if they're using drugs. And I've had people dragged from DWI checkpoints to the hospital to be tested. I had one poor guy who had his car ripped apart because an officer thought he was actually using marijuana. And after a four-hour traffic stop with drug sniffing dogs, they didn't find anything and they let him go. It was something innocent. I think he had just had like a taillight out, for example. And for that, he just wanted to have surgery and didn’t want to go through it (the police experience) again. I did have a lady drive from the Bay Area and I think was a five- or six-hour drive down. Had her case done. And for her, she sent me this text message about a year out and she said to the effect of: “This is my 11th month since surgery. I just wanted to thank you. I spent most of my adult life never looking people in the eye. The Pterygium negatively affected my self-esteem.” And for her to have this powerful impact, improvement in her quality of life and also her self-esteem and to send me this about a year later, that's really powerful.
And I will add one final case. I had a young man - college age, twenty, twenty-one or so - who was taken care of through a major university down in Los Angeles. And he had a bad Pterygium, it was affecting his vision. It was very disfiguring; his eye was red as can. He was a handsome guy but he just had this disfiguring mass on his eye. They wouldn't touch him at one of your major universities. And finally, he got in the internet and found me and I said, yeah, sure, we can do this one straightforward case. He was a little young but that the only risk factor he had for recurrence. I did the case and about two months out, I saw him and he was a new guy. He just had more spring to his step. He sat up straighter. He had more presence. You could tell he had this psychological burden lifted off of him. And that was just very, very powerful stuff. And he was basically a young guy getting ready to obviously move on with the rest of his life and he had this, suddenly the world was his oyster again, as well. So, I think that the psychological aspects of Pterygium, the psychological toll that it takes on somebody’d mind cannot be underestimated. It really takes a toll. And the cosmetic aspects are actually the more powerful stories for me. It's a good thing if an ophthalmologist takes somebody who's basically blind or can’t see from the Pterygium and makes their vision better. We do that all the time anyway, based on my LASIK surgery. It's great. Like I said, it never gets old. But at the same point, the psychological aspects of the Pterygium and taking a disfigured red eye, which is irritated and such, and giving them a normal look, the normal surgical look to the eye. You make the eye white quite again. For people, it's priceless.

About Dr. Franz Michel
Franz Michel, MD, a UCLA-trained cornea surface specialist, specializes in Pterygium surgery and bladeless, no-cut LASEK laser eye surgery. He is referred to as the "king of Pterygium" and has the largest Pterygium referral practice in the US. His Pterygium recurrence rates are less than 1%, a remarkably low rate compared to the 10-50% recurrence rates of other Pterygium removal surgeons.

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