Lions set sights on eye care for poor

Friday, Feb. 18, 2005 | 9:31 a.m.

For those who are not old enough to receive Medicare benefits and not poor enough to receive Medicaid, a new Las Vegas eye care program could fill the bill.

If the Southern Nevada Lions eye care program had not been in place, 58-year-old Carol Nordhop of Las Vegas could have gone blind from a cataract discovered on a screening.

For people living paycheck to paycheck without health insurance, Southern Nevada eye doctors have volunteered time, equipment and experience to save their sight.

The Southern Nevada Lions eye care program has scheduled Nordhop for surgery to remove her cataract by local ophthalmologist Dr. Emil Stein on Tuesday, a surgery that will mark the first time the program's free surgery has been done in Las Vegas. A second surgery has been scheduled later in the day.

It's an offer to the poor that began in August 2004, Stein said. More than 250 applications from poor and homeless people asking for assistance have been reviewed from referrals made by charities, homeless shelters and community health care centers.

The screening process begins with the patients being identified by community health care centers, homeless shelters and charitable organizations providing other services to needy people, Stein said.

Once a person is identified, he or she calls a number given to them by the agency for an application.

A volunteer group of Lions on the SightFirst Conservation Committee reviews and approves patients, who are assigned to a volunteer ophthalmologist for an exam.

The Southern Nevada SightFirst Conservation Committee is chaired by Dr. Win Adler, who developed the local comprehensive eye care program.

So far in Las Vegas 35 eye doctors have offered to examine patients for free.

Eyeglasses were given free to those whose vision could be corrected with lenses.

However, this year those who ophthalmologists discovered have more serious problems, such as cataracts or glaucoma, are being scheduled for surgery in some cases.

In addition to an ophthalmologist donating his or her time, anesthesia and surgical facilities are also provided without charge.

Stein said he grew up in Las Vegas after his Air Force father moved the family from western Massachusetts. He joined the U.S. Army for four years, participating in Desert Storm and returned to Las Vegas in 1993.

"I was interested in charitable activity," Stein said.

With his medical degree from UCLA, Stein surveyed eye care for the poor in Southern Nevada.

For years the Lions Club gave Las Vegas patients with eye problems a $200 round-trip bus ticket and sent them to San Francisco where the club has an eye clinic for the poor.

"It's a 15-hour bus ride," Stein said. "Most doctors would never want their patients to do that. Besides, there was no follow-up medical care available back in Las Vegas."

For eight years he examined patients once or twice a month at the Nevada Center for the Blind, then began exams in his office.

Las Vegas has grown enough to support free eye care for the poor, Stein said.

The full range of services from eye exams to post-operative care are available in Las Vegas, Stein said.

If patients need eye surgery now, local ophthalmologists will donate their time, offices and equipment to provide surgical services at no cost to the patients.