LAGUNA HILLS : Physician to Teach Methods in Armenia

Roger Ohanesian, a local ophthalmologist who has made four trips to Armenia to help treat war victims’ eye injuries, has just left on what he calls his most important visit to the area.

He and four other U.S. eye doctors will hold the first-ever U.S.-Armenia Eye Conference in Yerevan, Armenia’s capital, on Friday and Sept. 17. There, they will train about 200 doctors from Armenia, Iran and Russia in how to remove shrapnel lodged behind a victim’s retina, perform glaucoma surgery, and use specialized surgical equipment such as lasers and ultrasound apparatus.

“The feeling I have is I’m lucky that I’ve got a talent that other people want, so if there is something I can do and didn’t help, it would be terrible,” Ohanesian said. “You feel much better for having done it.”

It is the fifth trip to Armenia since 1992 for Ohanesian, 54, whose grandparents immigrated to the United States from Armenia. He said he believes this will be the most important trip because rather than just helping the Armenian doctors with surgeries as they’ve done in the past, this time they will teach them how to do the work.

“We want to get them to where they are self-sustaining,” Ohanesian said. “It’s like the proverb that if you bring a person a fish they’ll have food for a day, but if you teach them to fish, they’ll have food forever.”

Ohanesian said the harsh conditions in which the doctors work in Yerevan make surgeries difficult. On earlier visits, he has conducted retinal surgeries while listening to a barrage of automatic gunfire outside the window and battling a lack of heat and electricity, which makes much of the technical equipment unusable.

Ohanesian said that if doctors in the Caucasus improve their eye surgery techniques, he will no longer have to raise money to bring patients to the United States for treatment, which he has done after previous trips.

One man, whose eye was destroyed in a bomb blast but whose other eye was salvageable, came to the United States for surgery. The man, now back in Armenia with the sight in the one eye restored, has spent countless hours driving about Yerevan to put the final touches on the eye conference.

And that, Ohanesian said, is proof that all the trouble he’s gone to has been worth it.