Prospective Evaluation of Radial Keratotomy (PERK) Study

Launched by NATIONAL EYE INSTITUTE (NEI) · Sep 23, 1999

Keywords

ClinConnect Summary

Approximately 11 million Americans have myopia that can be corrected with eyeglasses or contact lenses. Some of these people may also be candidates for radial keratotomy (RK), a procedure that aims to correct or reduce myopia by surgery that flattens the corneal curvature.

Keratotomy was first performed by surgeons in Europe and the United States in the late 1800s, and the basic optical and mechanical principles of the operation were defined in the 1940s and 1950s by the Japanese doctors T. Sato and K. Akiyama, who used anterior and posterior corneal incisions. The posterior incisions dama...

Gender

ALL

Eligibility criteria

• • All men and women had 2 to 8 diopters of simple myopia and were correctable to 20/20 or better with glasses or contact lenses. All patients had the stability of their myopia documented by previous records. Patients were at least 21 years of age and lived in the metropolitan area of the study centers. Each patient agreed to have surgery on one eye and to wait 1 year for surgery on the other eye. Patients with systemic diseases that might affect corneal wound healing and patients with high corneal astigmatism were excluded from the study.