Complain about a product or service

Pacific Laser Eye Center

Torrance, CA

Sandy of Rolling Hills Estates CA (4/25/02):
I was referred to Dr. Tay Weinman of Pacific Laser Eye Center in Torrance by my optometrist, Dr. James Hawley. During my LASIK surgery, the blade jammed in my first eye. I was not informed of this, and Dr. Weinman continued with surgery, applying the laser over an uneven bed of tissue. (Standard of care is to stop and let the eye heal for three months before doing laser surgery.) He proceeded with the other eye, and never informed me of the complication.

After surgery, I developed a massive inflammation from a contaminant left under the corneal flap. My OD was doing my post-op care and failed to diagnose it before it had digested a good part of my cornea. My surgeon did another laser procedure, but I later discovered that he'd made several errors at that time also. Two months post-op, I learned that Dr. Hawley had a financial interest in the laser center, and had basically made a self-referral. He was given $1100 of my surgery fee, and $600 of my fee was given to Pacific Laser Eye Center as seed money to build the Torrance center.

Dr. Hawley had told me prior to surgery that Dr. Weinman was "getting better results than the doctors at UCLA" which constituted consumer fraud, because it turns out that he was a rookie surgeon, still in the learning curve for LASIK and he was not getting better results. The worst part of all was my discovery that I was never a good candidate for LASIK because I have exceptionally large pupils and dry eyes. I had also worn hard contact lenses for 25 years prior to surgery and had corneal warpage from the lenses when the surgery was done.

I sued both doctors and settled out of court. My concern is that approximately 60 local optometrists have a financial interest in Pacific Laser Eye Center and are participating in self-referrals for financial gain, not considering the best interest of their patients. I personally have had nine surgeries on my right eye to try to correct the damage that Dr. Weinman did to me, and none of them have been able to improve my uncorrected vision. The ridge in my eye will be there forever unless I have a corneal transplant.