As spring approaches, take a moment to assess your comfort level with refractive surgery. Use or adapt the abbreviations in Table 1 to fill in the charts in Figure 1. Change the limits of the boxes if you wish.

After you have filled the charts with the types of procedures you actually perform, give the pages to a responsible individual in your office who will place them after the page for December 31, 2006, in the patient log in book or someplace similar. It will be interesting to see how your choices for refractive surgery have remained constant or changed. Conducting this assessment annually will be instructive, because the process will identify trends in your surgical practice as well as in the overall popularity of various procedures and products. Your comments are welcome, and I will also note that Rick Baker, OD, of Houston and I are still collecting data for our final report on the functional contrast acuity concept.1 

Lee T. Nordan, MD, is a technology consultant for Vision Membrane Technologies, Inc., in Carlsbad, California.
Dr. Nordan may be reached at (760) 431-1846; laserltn@aol.com.

1. Nordan LT. The functional contrast acuity test. Cataract & Refractive Surgery Today. 2006 January;6:1:19-22.