the true appreciation of vision from
the patients they're able to help,
either dramatically or by the most
minimalist means.
“To be able to be that person that helps
patients maintain their best potential
vision or gain better vision on a weekly
basis is really a gift,” she says. “Patients
come into my office post-op day one,
every single week, and at least three of
them are blown away, from what to us
is normal. But for a lot of people the
expectations are not what we're able
to give them now. T hey're amazed at
how well they can see.”
The corneal transplant patients are a
different category altogether than her
cataract patients.
“These are really, really sick eyes and
a lot of these patients never thought
they would see again,” Ziai says. “We
don't always get them back to 20-20,
but we get them back to a place that
they've not been in many, many years,
and that's everything to these people.
Because 20-400 may not sound good
to you, but for some people 20-400 is
the difference between independence
and being completely reliant on
someone else.”
Her biggest challenge comes not from
complex surgeries either, but while
she's working in the clinic. She says
with too few professionals and a grow-
ing number of patients, they can only
do so much with the time they have
to serve.
“The sheer volume of patients now,
with the baby boomers aging and cuts
in government funding, it's become
extremely stressful to care for the people
who need care,” she says. “When they
get to me, or any of my colleagues in
an academic centre, we're the end of
the road. So if I can't see them for six
or seven months because I have 60
people a day to see in the clinic, people
feel that, and that's what stresses me
out in my everyday that I can't see
more patients and that there's so many
more patients and not enough of us
to treat them.”
In the operating room, which Ziai
calls her “Zen Space,” she specializes
on corneal transplants and cataract
surgeries. And it's where she puts her
training to work to help a wide variety
of patients on a regular basis.
The technological advancement she's
seen during her brief time in the field
has jumped ahead dramatically in 20
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years. Ziai used corneal transplants
as an example, where they once had to
remove the entire cornea to replace
damaged tissue – where now they're
able to do a partial removal of the dis-
eased tissue, called a Lamellar corneal
transplant. Depending on the disease,
this allows the damaged layer of the
cornea, about eight microns thick, to
be replaced with an exact anatomical
structure from a donor eye.
“So the outcomes are better, the surger-
ies are much less invasive, the patients
recover much quicker and this is just
in my little world of the cornea,”
says Ziai.
And the key to continued advancements
in the eyecare field comes from those
who do the most research and devel-
opment and maintain a passion for
advancing the field of ophthalmology.
She says Canada is keeping up with
the world because of the contributions
of medical professionals.
“Nothing happens without these
innovators and key opinion leaders,
the early adopters of new technology,”
she says. “You need bright minds and
passionate physicians to take on new
ideas and develop them into practice.”