We are thrilled to welcome our new Ophthalmologist, Dr. Peter Murr! Dr. Murr provides comprehensive ophthalmology services, cataract surgery, in-office laser and minor procedures, speaks intermediate Mandarin, and is bilingual English/Spanish. In his free time, he enjoys reading, soccer, and tennis.
Please be sure to welcome Dr. Murr the next time you’re in the office!
While putting together our new redesigned site, we asked our doctors for facts and trivia about eyes. You’ll find them scattered all around the site, but here are a few extra ones you may find interesting.
The average person blinks 12 times per minute – about 10,000 blinks in an average day.
Only 1/6th of the eyeball is exposed to the outside world.
Eyelashes have an average life span of 5 months.
About half of our brain is involved in the seeing process. Humans are very much visual animals.
The external muscles that move the eyes are the strongest muscles in the human body for the job that they have to do. They are 100 times more powerful than they need to be.
The eyeball of a human weighs approximately 28 grams, or one ounce.
Ophthalmologists are graduates of a medical school, whereas optometrists are not.
Cataract formation is a normal aging phenomenon, and so all animals in the kingdom that see will get cataracts if they live long enough.
In Lasik, the accuracy is measured in microns. A micron is one-millioneth of a meter.
On a dark night, a human eye can see a candle flickering 30 miles away.
You see with your brain. The eyes sense light and is connected to the brain by over a million nerve fibers.
Theodore Roosevelt is the only president who lost an eye while still in office.
The word “eyeball” was coined by William Shakespeare in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
The giant squid has the largest eye.
At any given point, your eyeballs are moving 70 to 100 times per second all over.
Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing.
Women blink nearly twice as much as men.
Babies cry but don’t produce tears until one to three months after birth.
Of all the muscles in our body, the eye muscles are the most active.
All babies no matter what nationality or race, have blue eyes in the womb.
The shark cornea has been used in eye surgery, since its cornea is similar to a human cornea.
The most common injury caused by cosmetics is to the eye by a mascara wand.
Dr. Stephen Felton began what would become Princeton Eye Group in 1980.
As he enters the twilight of his career, recently limiting his practice to three days a week, Dr. Felton has begun reflecting on an incredible life and career that nearly never occurred. For Stephen was born, two months premature, in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942. His mother Eva Feldsztein would escape the Holocaust and Nazi tyranny with her ‘miracle’ baby, but not before experiencing and enduring unspeakable tragedy and atrocity.
Eva and Stephen survived the war with the help of the Matacz’s, a Polish Christian family, only to learn later of the extermination of Stephen’s father Victor and step-brother Stasio in the Auschwitz death camp.
This is not a subject that Eva would ever be comfortable speaking about. In fact, she never did until recording her memoirs prior to her death in 1992. Those words would later be published in I Shall Lead You Through The Nights-The Holocaust Memoir of Eva Feldsztein (ComteqPublishing.com).
Among the thousands of patients that Dr. Felton has touched in 35 years, few if any are aware of his story. He is well known in Princeton and throughout the area as an accomplished and trusted ophthalmologist and surgeon. While never comfortable talking about the past, he recently reflected, “I have always been driven to help others. I never wanted to be wealthy, just comfortable. Inside I had a fatalistic view of life knowing bad things could happen at any moment, knowing it can all disappear in a day. I wanted to be a nice person and have a good family. In that respect I feel very lucky.”
Stephen arrived in the United States in 1947, settling in Brooklyn, New York with his mother and new stepfather. His role model would become his Uncle Joe, who he would later follow into the chemical business. Stephen would earn his Ph.D in Chemistry before going to medical school at age 30. He wanted to improve people’s lives.
Today, he feels Holocaust education is critical. “People need to know how bad things can be. How can one person, like Hitler, generate that kind of hatred? How does humanity allow that to happen?”
He spoke publicly on the subject for the first time at the Princeton Jewish Center. It was a cathartic experience. “Even my close friends didn’t know my story. It was time. My mother was nothing short of an amazing, brave and kind person. I feel very lucky.”
Eva Feldzstein’s spirit and legacy lives on in Stephen, his family, his colleagues and the thousands of patients and lives that he has helped to improve.
Dr. Felton is most proud of his partners and colleagues and all that they have contributed to the community. He has performed over 10,000 cataract procedures over 35 years. And he has helped Princeton Eye Group become the most popular and respected practice in the area. “We conduct business as true partners. Through discussion and consensus we have made almost all of our important business decisions. Our collective training and caring of patients is what has bonded us together all of these years.”
Stephen and his family were reunited with the Matacz family in Poland. They were recognized in 2012 with the title Righteous Among Nations by Yad Vashem and the Israeli government for having hidden Eva and Stephen from the Nazis.
Stephen plans to travel and play more golf with his newfound ‘spare’ time.
I Shall Lead You Through The Nights is used today at colleges and universities as part of their Holocaust education programs.
Update: read more about Dr. Felton’s story in Princeton’s Town Topics.
Dr. Epstein has been teaching ophthalmology residents at Wills Eye Hospital for the past 10 years. Spending time in the Wills Cataract and Primary Eye Care Clinic and the operating room teaching cataract surgery is his way of giving back to his alma mater. Dr. Epstein derives great pride in knowing that his efforts ensure the next generation of cataract surgeons are as talented as the current one.
“It is such an honor and a privilege to teach at one of the top eye hospitals in the world” says Dr. Epstein of Wills. “The residents are so bright and eager and are sponges for knowledge. They constantly ask questions and listen intently. It forces me to be at the top of my game. Seeing their progression from pupils to star cataract surgeons is extremely rewarding.”
It is not always easy though. “Performing cataract surgery and teaching are two different skills but one reinforces the other,” according to Dr. Epstein. “I love the challenge of explaining how to do something that comes naturally – breaking it down into its component parts and simplifying it so it can be repeated.” Advanced technology used in cataract surgery is constantly changing and a surgeon needs to be able to adapt to these new technologies in order to offer the best care for their patients. “My job is not just to teach the residents how to use the currently available methods but to build a foundation of skills in order to continuously improve and utilize new technology as it becomes available.”
Asked why he would give up the equivalent of two weeks vacation a year to teach at Wills, the answer is readily available. “Ultimately, doctors go into medicine to help people. In a surgeon’s career, he or she will have the opportunity to restore vision and improve the lives of tens of thousands of patients. By educating the residents, I can amplify that impact to hundreds of thousands of patients. It’s a way I can maximize my positive impact on society.”
Teaching has another unexpected benefit. According to Dr. Epstein, “Teaching fundamental and advanced techniques makes you a better surgeon by forcing you to constantly re-evaluate your own mechanics and skills.” All of the doctors at Princeton Eye Group help to teach residents, medical and college students from Wills Eye Hospital, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, and Princeton University.
Dr. Michael Wong, a pioneer in minimally invasive cataract surgery, is the distinguished recipient of the New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame’s Innovator’s Award. This recognition honors lifetime achievement, invention and innovation among outstanding, New Jersey-based scientists, engineers and researchers.
Dr. Wong is the first clinical physician to be honored as an innovator by the New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame. His surgical procedures to correct cataracts, the most common and treatable form of blindness, reduce the rate of post-operative infection and promote faster healing. The technique he developed, known as the ‘Wong Way,’ is now used world-wide. For three decades Dr. Wong has been in the vanguard in refractive surgery in central New Jersey, introducing radial keratotomy in the 80’s and LASIK surgery in the 90’s. He has also been recognized with the Distinguished Physicians Humanitarian Award by the University Medical Center of Princeton at Plainsboro for charitable work performed locally, as well as overseas in Africa and South America.
The New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame was established in 1987 to honor individuals and corporations who have made New Jersey ‘The Invention State.’ Previous Innovator Award recipients include Lyman Spitzer, Jr. for distinguished achievements in stellar dynamics, plasma physics, thermonuclear fusion and space astronomy; Frank B. Gilbreth, who pioneered the field of scientific workforce management, positively affecting engineering, education and personnel
procedures; and John von Neumann, who established the mathematical architecture of computer logic and concept of internally stored programs.
Upon being informed of the award, Dr. Wong said, “I am honored to keep company with these distinguished past recipients and the other awardees.”
After winning the award, Dr. Wong was elected to serve as the Selection Committee Chairman for the New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame, a position he currently holds. He admits, “It’s fun having the opportunity to read all sorts of science and review patents.”
According to an article in The Archives of Ophthalmology, researchers have estimated that 20.5 million Americans over the age of 40 have a cataract in at least one eye, and women are nearly 40 percent more likely to develop them than men.
In the elderly, cataracts are the most common cause of vision loss. Cataracts are the clouding over of the clear, crystalline lens inside the eye. This cloudiness scatters light, reducing contrast and causing glare, especially in bright light or while driving at night.
The common treatment for cataracts involves removing the cloudy lens with ultrasound that liquifies the cataract, and then restoring vision with an intraocular lens transplant.
Dr. Michael Wong has developed a technique to improve the sealing effect for sutureless clear corneal cataract incisions. He creates a supraincisional stromal pocket just before making the clear corneal incision. This pocket is hydrated at the end of the procedure to increase a downward pressure to oppose the upward force of the intraocular pressure. This compresses the clear corneal incision, improving its seal to speed healing and reduces the chance of infection. This ‘no-stitch, minimally invasive technique’ is used world-wide, and has been featured in the most prominent medical journals.
Dr. Wong has contributed his method to a major ophthalmology textbook titled Mastering Refractive IOLs: The Art and Science, edited by David Chang.
Congratulations Dr. Wong!
Dr. Michael Wong has been fortunate to have a strong support system both in his associates at the Princeton Eye Group and his family, that allow him time to help those in need.
“I simply see the work I do overseas as an extension of what I do here locally. There are no borders to humanity,” explains Dr. Wong. His many international contacts through organizations such as Surgical Eye Expeditions and Vision Outreach International helps tremendously in the logistical planning. He plans on making annual missions in the future in addition to the significant amount of charity provided locally by the doctors of the Princeton Eye Group.
You coordinated an “eye camp in Oshakati, Namibia. Tell us about it.
Surgical Eye Expeditions connects a host ophthalmologist from a needy country with a willing volunteer such as me. Namibia is fortunate to have a dedicated “Blindness Secretariat” by the name of Helena Ndume. After a brief correspondence, I gathered my son Matthew, age 16 at the time, and hauled surgical supplies along with a caravan of Red Cross volunteers and nurses, to this impoverished area of Namibia near the Angolan border. This area had been ravaged by a civil war and drought. Those in need of eye surgery basically wait, years at a time, until an “eye camp” can be set-up, and only hope that they make it on the list. There was more work than expected, but undaunted, we worked 16 hour days and actually took care of every last person who had come, some from hundreds of miles away, many by foot. The medical situation was challenging, but the people couldn’t have been nicer or more appreciative.
Twice you’ve gone to remote villages in the Andes mountains of Peru under difficult circumstances. You performed 75 cataract surgeries and 25 surgeries for individuals with crossed eyes in Juliaca and repeated that program in Huamachuco. Describe those trips.
It was a compelling story, one to which I had to respond. The indigenous Indians of Juliaca, descendants of the Incans, are amongst the most impoverished in South America, caught between neglect and civil war. At nearly 14,000 feet elevation, the extreme UV light has caused an epidemic of cataracts. Without supplies, the local ophthalmologist was hamstrung. This adventure included my son Scott, and the two of us completed the first cataract surgeries done in that region in decades. Unprepared for the elevation and freezing temperatures, this was the most difficult trip for me from a physical point-of-view. I suffered the worst headaches of my life and developed asthma. Still worth my going, nevertheless.
The Huamachuco trip presented other challenges. Arriving at this site, the entire country of Peru underwent a general strike. The town services shut down, including the nurses at the hospital. So I “deputized” the handful of teenagers who volunteered for the trip, taught them operative technique and transformed them into operating nurses. My daughter Julia, 16 at the time, who came along thinking she would be doing some paperwork and taking pictures, was “first scrub-assistant” for the very first modern-day cataract operation in Huamachuco. I learned how much youthful exuberance and enthusiasm can do when push comes to shove.
You’ve included your family in some of your service trips. Tell us about that.
It’s more fun when you can share and learn, and never better than with your family. All three of my children have been on overseas missions with me, and they did so eagerly and have not been disappointed. My wife, an R.N., switched gears and went from being a cardiac nurse to an ophthalmic nurse so that she can come on these missions with me. It has become a family affair and an enriching one at that. I learn from these trips: about humanity, about other peoples, about myself. What the kids learn is different, as they come from a different perspective, but learning they do. Not sure what, but the experience is so different from the book learning in Princeton. I encourage young people to explore in these directions. Many say it’s life-transforming.
Dr. John Epstein, a long time guitarist with a passion for music, wanted to make sure his kids shared this important part of his life. His daughters began playing musical instruments at the age of 5, and now his 11 year old daughter, Isabella, plays piano, harp, cello, keyboards, accordion and flute. His 9 year old daughter, Madeline, plays electric and upright bass, piano, and drums. His wife also plays flute and can sing. So what do you do with all that talent under one roof? Why, of course, you start a band. Thus, ‘PJ Rocker’ was born. Their first major gig was to play at Dr. Epstein’s own 40th birthday party.
In another particularly special moment, Dr. Epstein was invited to be a guest guitarist at a charity concert at the famous Canal Room in New York City to benefit the Clark School For the Deaf. His daughter Madeline joined him on bass. They played in front of over 300 people and helped raise $40,000 for the charity. Truly a night both father and daughter will never forget!
School has caused the Epstein girls to take a rest from ‘touring’ this past winter, but look for ‘PJ Rocker’ in the open-mic scene throughout the area this summer.
Recently, Drs. Stephen Felton and Michael Wong were recognized for their support of the Design for Healing Campaign to support the new University Medical Cener of Princeton at Plainsboro (UMCPP), the new state-of-the-art hospital that will serve the Princeton area. To show your support, please visit www.princetonhcs.org/foundation.
On the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in Montana more than half the population relies completely on the grossly under funded Indian Health Service for health care. Serious health problems such as diabetes, TB, alcoholism and drug dependence are much more prevalent there than in the general population.
Dr. Stephen Felton, founder of The Princeton Eye Group is dedicated to helping where he can. He volunteers his time and experience to treat the numerous eye problems of the Blackfeet people. From eye exams to eyelid surgery, hundreds of people receive the expert care they desperately need, free. “On the Reservation, I don’t have the luxury of the modern equipment and materials I’m used to working with”, said Dr. Felton. “But, in the end, I’m able to make a difference to people in need. It’s a rewarding experience.”
On April 4, 2007 in North Brunswick, New Jersey, a 16 year old girl from the country of Palestine, Ahlam Abuowda, received life- enhancing eye surgery. Through the help of the Lions Eye Bank of Delaware Valley, Dr. Michael Wong, a cornea transplant surgeon, an international relief agency, and many others, the girl received a corneal transplant. Within one week, the child will significantly recover activities of daily living denied her for many years.
The recipient, at the age of 6, experienced a traumatic eye injury due to a blast from a gas canister. With inadequate medical care together with a very dry environment as well as a suspected underlying eye disorder, the girl’s vision severely handicapped her.
The eldest of 13 children, she lives in Palestine, near the Gaza Strip, in a roofless 2 bedroom apartment with 16 other people. Four of her siblings have spina bifida. Her parents and grandparents are unemployed. Because of the region’s poverty, sufficient medical care was lacking. The eye physicians who examined her did not have access to equipment, supplies and pharmaceuticals to provide good medical care. However, in their assessment, they believed that her retina was fine and the damage was to her cornea.
The Lions Eye Bank of Delaware Valley recovers donated corneal tissue and distributes the corneas to physicians whose patients have no or low vision due to specific corneal diseases. Dr. Michael Wong, a Princeton, New Jersey board certified ophthalmologist who travels world wide providing free eye care to remote impoverished areas, was contacted by the relief agency. They mailed him many different eye cases, most which were not amenable to treatment, except in the case of the young Palestinian girl.
After review, Dr. Wong decided to take the case pro bono. He then met with the Lions Eye Bank of Delaware Valley, the region’s cornea transplant bank, explained the child’s medical plight and they too agreed to provide free services.
Arrangements were made to bring the child to America and a Palestinian host family was selected. After she made her way to her homeland’s border crossings, she waited days to get through. Her journey was delayed once because of nearby border bombings and yet another time because of a border killing. Her wait was further extended due to visa problems.
And finally, when she arrived at New York’s JFK Airport, frightened by the roar of jet engines, unable to see beyond one foot, not knowing any English, what she understood and knew was the promise of a better life.