Diana Kersten, an ophthalmologist from Laguna Beach, has just returned from a Vietnam trip, where she helped perform nearly 60 cataract surgeries. (Read a complete Register story about her motivation to do non profit work). (Click on the picture to enlarge)

She hopes to raise money for her counterparts in Hue to purchase cataract surgery equipment. Below are edited excerpts from an e-mail she sent this week about her work in Vietnam:

“We did 59 cataract surgeries during week. They were almost all “mature” cataracts, meaning that the lens had turned white and the patient couldn’t see anything but “hand
motions” vision. (They could detect if a hand was waving in front of the eye, but that was all.)

The Hue ophthalmologists had run a radio advertisement for two days, in order to let the community know that SEE (Surgical Eye Expeditions) would be there and would be doing free cataract surgery. The ages ranged from 45 - 95 and all of the patients were obviously quite poor. Their families stayed with them and provided food and assistance for the 4 days that they stayed at the hospital.

There were several Vietnamese ophthalmologists that did cataract surgeries as well; I didn’t do all of them! Hue General Hospital has a residency (training) program and they asked if I would help the residents learn cataract surgery.

I did this at UCI for many years, so it was fun to assist
them. I helped one of the doctors with her very first cataract surgery. The Vietnamese doctors were very well trained and did excellent cataract surgeries. They even had one phacoemulsification machine, which is what we use for cataract surgery in the US.

Their machine looks like it is 15 or more years old, and it is a tribute to the doctors and engineers in Hue that they have kept it working for so long! The doctors were uniformly gracious and hospitable. The hospital usually does only 10 cataracts per week. This seems to be due to difficulty with obtaining IOLs (implants) and other expensive implements of cataracts surgery.

There are many thousands of patients that need cataract surgery in the Hue area, but most of the patients can not afford  the fee for the surgery. The fee seems to vary from $25 to $400, depending on what type of IOL they get, and whether phacoemulsification is used.

The Hue doctors love to do surgery, so there was a very festive feeling about the week. There were usually three doctors operating at the same time. I was extremely impressed with the caliber and skills of the Vietnamese
ophthalmologists.

I am hoping to work through SEE, and try to raise enough
money to buy them an indirect ophthalmoscope and a new phaco machine. I hope that SEE will allow people to donate to a fund at SEE, reserved for this purpose, but I need to call them this week.

They have no indirect ophthalmoscope at the hospital! This is the major instrument that is used to look at the retina, and to diagnose retinal detachments, macular degeneration and other retinal problems. (Not having one is like an internist not having a stethoscope!)

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