Free Republic

Performing eye surgery is no simple task. Even with the aid of sophisticated instruments, the slightest miscalculation can cause irreparable damage to the patient's sight. One South Orange surgeon learned yesterday morning, however, that the work is far more difficult when a 4,300-pound SUV comes barreling through the wall during an operation. Bernard Spier was finishing a routine cataract surgery at Northern New Jersey Eye Institute at 8:37 a.m. yesterday when another patient drove his red Toyota 4Runner through the wall, stopping just inches from Spier and the patient lying partially sedated on a gurney in the middle of the...

NEWARK, N.J. -- Here's a complication the surgeon and patient didn't expect. An SUV rammed into a New Jersey doctor's operating room toward the end of a cataract procedure. No one was injured. But Dr. Bernard Spier says if the accident had happened moments earlier, it could have hurt the patient's eye. Spier had removed the cataract and had just used a plunger to implant a silicone lens when the crash threw him onto the partially sedated patient Tuesday. Police said the driver was trying to back his SUV out of a parking space outside the Northern New Jersey Eye...