ABSTRACT
In the movie SLEEPER, Woody Allen awakens in the 22nd century after two hundred years of frozen sleep and finds that he, as well as everyone else in the world, is wearing heavy horn-rimmed glasses. While this scenario was funny, even believable, when it was filmed, it is entirely possible that a relatively new surgical procedure will virtually eliminate the need for eyeglasses and contact lenses, especially in people with mild, uncomplicated, nearsightedness. That procedure, which resulted from a series of fortunate, or unfortunate, accidents, depending on how you look at them, is called Refractive Keratectomy. Keratectomy simply means that the cornea, the transparent tissue just in front of the lens, is incised; and Refractive implies that the focusing of light within the eye is altered. When the operation was first devised it was called keratotomy because only punctures or incisions were made in the cornea. When corneal tissue was actually removed, the name was changed to keratectomy. Both terms are used interchangeably.
