From South America to Rockville Centre, ophthalmologist brings hope to indigent patients

Posted Sunday, January 29, 2012 8:24 pm

For the past 15 years, Dr. Alexander Hatsis, an ophthalmologist in Rockville Centre, has donated his time to sight-saving missions around the world.

“In a small way we are fighting blindness due to cataracts which effects millions of people around the world,” he said, when he received the 2010 Salvation Army Humanitarian Man or the Year Award. With help from The Rockville Centre Lions Club, these missions have helped thousands of people regain their sight.

Upon returning from surgery in Santiago, Dominican Republic, Hatsis was determined to start an initiative to provide sight-saving programs to help people here on Long Island. In conjunction with the Rockville Centre Lions Club, “The Community Vision

Project,“ to help neighbors was created.

“My facility here in Rockville Centre can diagnose and surgically treat those in need, but I need help identifying those people who are truly unable to qualify for medical assistance” Hatsis told the Lions Club.

Last year the first woman treated was visiting her daughter from Peru. She was not receiving care for glaucoma and was slowly going blind.

A routine treatment called Selective Laser Trabeculoplasty was successfully performed. Hatsis said that the damage already done could not be reversed, but that future vision loss was arrested. Since then he has performed other glaucoma procedures as well as cataract surgery on completely blind people, with successful outcomes.

Diseases such as cataracts, glaucoma and diabetes will cause blindness if left untreated. The office of Hatsis Laser Vision helps people from near and far who have no medical alternatives and vision-threatening eye problems.

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