MEDICAL

Dr. Robert E. Fenzl, a Garden Grove ophthalmologist, will train eye surgeons this weekend in the use of a new laser that has been approved for testing on patients in the United States.

Fenzl said he will demonstrate the excimer laser manufactured by Summit Technology of Waterhouse, Mass. The laser, which has been undergoing patient tests in Europe for more than a year, has been authorized for human testing in this country by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as a step toward obtaining marketing approval.

Fenzl said the excimer laser offers more precision and has less potential for damaging side effects than other kinds of lasers now widely used in eye surgery. Unlike other lasers that cut by burning or small explosions, he said, the excimer laser vaporizes eye tissue.

Fenzl, who specializes in eye surgery to treat stigmatism, said he was one of two physicians initially chosen to participate in FDA trials to test the laser’s safety and effectiveness in treating patients with stigmatism and glaucoma. The other physician, he said, is Dr. John Hunkler of Kansas City.

“It is the biggest thing that has happened in eye surgery in years,” Fenzl said of the excimer laser.

He said he expected 15 eye surgeons from around the country to come to this weekend’s training program. Those doctors will not be authorized to use the new laser while it is in the testing stage unless they are selected by the FDA to participate in the trials.

Also in attendance, he said, will be John Marshall, a British scientist who did the basic technological research on Summit’s excimer laser, and Dr. Theo Seiler, a German eye surgeon who has been conducting clinical tests of the laser in England.