Friends, we hope this Christmas season finds all of you healthy and enjoying the blessings of faith, family, and fellowship. Coming out of Covid, our clinic at CCSHH continues to work at a high level. As such, there is always plenty to do and hope that many of you will prayerfully consider coming for a visit. We all have other priorities in life but would like to share why providing spending a few days at our clinic is rewarding personally.
First of all, you get to learn or gain more proficiency in manual small incision cataract surgery (MSICS). While the clinic has a good phaco machine (Oertli), fully 80% of our cases continue to be dense cataracts. For motivated eye surgeons, our full-time ophthalmologist, Dr. Angel Somoza, is a master MSIC surgeon and will be glad to teach you. The skill set is unique and clearly additive to your surgery repertoire as well. Additionally, we are seeing greater use of minimally invasive glaucoma procedures in the El Progreso clinic. As in many places here in the U.S., compliance and affordability to medications is a challenge. As such, utilizing stents and goniotomy procedures continue to help with long-term control. As part of the effort, it has been a great honor to bring a senior Ophthalmology resident twice yearly to our clinic. They gain MSIC skills, perform MIGS procedures, suture IOLs, and improve their pterygium surgery skills to name a few. The university uses this week as part of their international elective and is incredibly popular. Frankly, we have more residents wanting to go than slots sometimes.
There are also clinic brigades that travel to other regions of Honduras. Many of our visiting ophthalmologists regularly go to the same destination on an annual basis. Our clinic team sets up the dates and brings some supplies including portable microscopes. Our non-profit, eye clinic has been the only organization to consistently serve the eye care of the indigent population throughout Honduras.
If you cannot attend, prayerfully consider giving a donation to the clinic through Vision for the Americas. There are needs including an updated video display in the operating room, ongoing medical supplies, a surgical microscope, and a diode laser for transscleral cyclophotocoagulation. The clinic is also in the process of expansion by adding more exam lanes and patient waiting areas.
Lastly, and most importantly, as ophthalmologists, we have all had those great memories after cataract surgery of witnessing a patient burst into joy after regaining their vision. It is simply our calling or what we do…assisting in restoring sight. Having done this for almost 15 years at our clinic in El Progreso, the blessing and satisfaction of assisting these patients in their daily lives are still as real as it was in the beginning. Furthermore, we are inspired by our selfless staff at CCSHH which is wholly committed to this effort. From the security guards who show kindness to guiding patients in the right direction and our pastors who faithfully preach and minister daily to our patients, to the technicians and the clinic staff who see the patients, our team serves God through serving others.
If you have questions, feel free to call me. We hope you will come join us!
Ron Braswell, MD
205-329-3590
Vision for the Americas 