To clarify, I am a medical student AND a Doctor of Optometry, so this forum is most certainly designed for me. As far as I know you and I are either pursuing the same degree a Doctor of Medicine, or you currently have a Doctor of Medicine. Thus, your statement is found to be false, "in a forum not even designed for his profession."
Second, I have many more surgical PRK cases and SLT cases under my belt than someone fresh out of an ophthalmology residency. This is a purely a statistical fact that comes from having a head start in performing more surgical procedures. This scenario would hold true in the reverse fashion if when I did my first PRK and SLT laser eye surgeries one of my esteemed ophthalmology counterparts had many PRK and SLT procedures under their belt from being in the profession longer than me. Again, from either vantage point this is non-inflammatory, simply the statistical norm of experience in performing the procedure. While you may feel upset at this truth, it is nevertheless the truth. In trying to get my medical counterparts and colleagues to understand the nature of our training, our surgical volume, and our experience you should never ever try to manipulate pure statistical truths with the accusation of "inflammatory comments." Presenting our high experience and safety record over 25 years now in performing these procedures will hopefully get ophthalmology to stop saying disingenuous and downright dishonest statements to the general public. I think the common goal is to get you to look at this issue from all sides so that in the future you can stop screaming "inflammatory " when an argument backed by statistics does not agree with your personal opinion and sentiment. To try and stifle and muffle the truth isn't really encouraging the free flow of the truth. I am truly sorry you find this to be inflammatory, but via surgical volume and experience, I have more PRK & SLT cases than a first, second or third year resident. And thats important for you to get a grip thats its non inflamatory so that you can professionally respect Doctors of Optometry better in the public spaces. Do you understand what I am trying to say?
We are trying very hard as a profession to overcome simply outright malicious lies on this topic. And as I progress through medical school for the search for the universal truth, I do not appreciate you trying to create a one-sided conversation. IN 2016 the JAMA published what is widely recognized both in ophthalmology and in optometry as a politically motivated study. In that article, it was claimed that because ophthalmology does fewer SLT procedures that they are somehow performing them safer and better than optometry. As we learned in our Epidemiology class, this is a classic case of correlation does NOT equal causation. Meaning, because Doctors of Optometry tend to treat 180 degrees of the Trabecular Meshwork at a time and then wait and evaluate for IOP lowering (in an attempt to deliver less thermal energy to the eye, which in turn prevents less post-operative pressure rise), optometry may need to perform a second round of treatments on the other 180 degrees. The JAMA 2016 article made it sound like because of competence we are having to retreat the same area over again versus treating the other 180 degrees. In contrast, Ophthalmology has fewer procedures because of treating the whole 360 degrees first (which also leads to a higher chance of post-operative IOP spikes). Yet, over the past 6 weeks ophthalmology has rigorously quote that "inflammatory" study and article to imply their performance of SLT's is better than optometry. So, if you really want to talk about statements that are "inflammatory", well that would be a fairly good example. Its pure and simple manipulating medicare data in a clear case of correlation doesn't equal causation. Optometry does not have a history of adverse outcomes in performing these procedures over a 25 year period. Volume wise I believe Medicare has us tracked as performing over 25,000 procedures in this time span. I say this with all due respect to you. While I might be traveling the medical school route right now, I do not look the other way from the truth nor saying the truth, as this is the mission of this forum.