Greetings:
My wife went to see her ophthalmologist today. He confirmed her suspicions. She has a cataract on her right eye. Unfortunately, although he can do the surgery, we simply won’t be in Canada long enough. We are only in Halifax, Nova Scotia until August 14 and then we go to Toronto, Ontario for two weeks. On August 28, we will return to the Middle East. The next available time he could do the surgery would be next summer during our next visit to Canada but this is simply too long to wait. My wife’s doctor recommends that she gets the cataract removed while we are overseas. He feels that my wife shouldn’t endure her visual discomfort any longer than necessary. While we are Saudi Arabia, we would like to get this surgery done but I don’t know even how to start the process of finding the right doctor. Five years ago, on the same eye, my wife had a vitrectomy. Her doctor in Halifax advices that the doctor who performs the cataract surgery should be aware of the vitrectomy so that he can take extra care during the cataract removal. It seems to me that my wife needs a very competent doctor for this operation. If the cataract surgery can be done in Saudi Arabia by a very competent doctor that is fine with us. However, if this very competent doctor is in Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, India, Thailand and so on this is fine with us also. I simply want the best doctor possible to do this surgery on my wife and we are willing to travel and pay to have it done correctly. I think that this process is called medical tourism but whatever it is called is fine with us. Any advice on finding the best doctor possible to do this surgery while we are in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, in the middle east, would be greatly appreciated.