Radial keratotomy

Radial keratotomy has always produced ambivalent feelings in the Ophthalmologist. The severe complications produced by the Sato procedure has been an unforgettable episode. The work of Fyodorov and Durney (1979) and their American counterparts, Bores (1981) and Hoffer (1981) have done a great service to radial keratotomy in having it established as an acceptable procedure. The controversy really only abated with the work of the National Institute of Health Funded Prospective Evaluation of Radial Keratotomy (PERK) study which suggested that the procedure has a low initial risk and was effective in decreasing myopic correction. Over the last 3 years a series of cases where evaluated and followed up in detail in an effort to gain a perspective on the one problem which has bugged the radial keratotomy programme from the beginning-its predict-ability.