Oculo is a Latin word for eyes, and facial refers to the face. In abroad, Oculofacial is recognized as a specialized field of ophthalmology and plastic surgery; however, there are only few doctors in Japan who specialize in this field. As one of these few doctors, I perform examination and treatment to patients with protruded eyes and obstructed lacrimal duct due to Graves' Disease, eyelid ptosis and entropion, eyelid malignant tumor, orbital tumor, orbital fat herniation and other similar disorders.
While general cosmetic medicine is targeted on what we call "normal people", we work on guiding patients, whose looks have changed due to sickness, to become better both in aesthetics and function.
Ophthalmologists are not entirely familiar with the surroundings of the eyeball, and plastic surgeons do not know much about the eyes.
Therefore, it has been common for patients with Graves' disease to have no choice but to give up hoping to get their old self back.
The situation is very serious to the point that there are patients who have given up in life, and so I wanted to do something about it.
Day by day I witness how patients who have suffered for five to ten years become very happy that they got their old selves back. For me, this is also my greatest pleasure in doing my work.
I graduated from Gunma University School of Medicine in 2002. In Japan, it is generally rare for one to be able to decide on a specialized field until he finishes six years of study and graduates in medical school. However, I have made my mind up about becoming an ophthalmologist at the beginning of my sixth grade.
It is because ophthalmology is a self-contained field. In ophthalmology, normal surgeries like cataract and glaucoma can be done by one person.
After becoming an ophthalmologist, I kept on thinking that it will be uninteresting to follow the same path as everyone. So I earnestly decided to go to this path when I studied in Seirei Hamamatsu General Hospital in Shizuoka Prefecture for 2 years in 2007.
At that time, eye socket reconstruction surgeries were performed only in this hospital. From there, I have learned that it is possible to perform medical care that focuses on the eyes and involves examining the entire face, and that diseases that were considered incurable at the university hospital can be treated, so I firmly decided to go to this path.
From 2015 to 2016, I studied at the University of California in Los Angeles and luckily, I was able to learn about the world's most famous doctor. What shocked me is that, in the US, patients who underwent ophthalmic surgery are not hospitalized. It would be understandable if a local anesthesia was used, but it is common for patients are able to go home on the same day even under general anesthesia.
I decided to adopt this procedure in Japan, and after returning in 2017,
I opened Shinmaebashi Kashima Oculoplastic Clinic in Gunma Prefecture. After that, I opened Oculofacial Clinic Tokyo in Ginza in 2018.
At present, I think that we are the only clinic that performs outpatient ophthalmologic procedures using general anesthesia.
For over 10 years, I have performed over 9000 surgeries in Japan and United States. I had 2000 cases in 2017 alone. Even ophthalmology departments in university hospitals usually have about 1500 to 2000 cases at most, so this is a considerable figure.
Improvement of surgical techniques is limited to how much one does the same thing. Although I am not aware about the time if I concentrate, I believe that the speed of our surgery is considerably faster as we have performed a lot of cases.
For example, they said that the operation for eyelid ptosis generally takes 301 minutes to hours per eye, but when we watched the surgery video that was streamed on YouTube, the procedure was done in 7 minutes. Also, they said that the surgery for bulging eyes due to Graves' disease takes more than two hours per eye, but we can do it for both eyes within 30 to 60 minutes.
Most people may be surprised about it, but it is a common scenario for me and my staff. If the required time for surgery is short, there will be less burden on the patient, and waiting patients could start their treatment as soon as possible.
If my staff worked as an assistant in another hospital, they will probably feel bored.
In the future, I would like to focus on training young people. They may not have the same experience as mine, but I can relay to them my experiences and show them the way.
Most of all, I have met wonderful people whom I consider a miracle and learned from them. If I just limit all the knowledge I have gained to my generation, I think it would be disrespectful to God and the doctors who taught me.
