This article is subject to legal complaint

LASER eye surgery, by offering patients near-perfect sight in one quick operation, has become a billion-pound industry, using the latest technology to generate vast profits.

From the biggest players such as Alcon, a £2 billion eyecare company, to the hundreds of sought-after ophthalmologists, the stakes could not be higher.

When a number of doctors from across America began to question whether Alcon’s Ladarvision system, a machine using Nasa laser technology, was malfunctioning, the company had two choices. It could have gone public, and recalled the potentially defective model or, like the three wise monkeys, it could see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil.

According to lawsuits in the United States, Alcon stands accused of adopting the second position. When a group of eye surgeons approached Tim Sear, the company’s chief executive, in October 2002 to voice their concerns, their unease was not put to rest.

In a transcript of the conference call, seen by The Times, Herman Sloane, an eye surgeon from Illinois, described how his lasers had been “unbelievably good” at first, but had begun to fluctuate badly. He said the number of patients he was having to re-treat had subsequently decreased, but he still “(got) a surprise now and again”.

The doctors said that some had reported that some of their patients had been left with astigmatisms and suffered ghost images, debilitating glare and blurred vision.

“As it sits right now, I am not comfortable . . . I started with a laser that was nearly perfect in my hands and I still haven’t recovered to my baseline,” Dr Sloane said.

At the end of the conversation, Mr Sear, the British former head of the Swiss-owned company, based in Texas, thanked the doctors for raising issues “which we take very seriously”.

Yet to date at least two of the doctors’ concerns remain unresolved and the company continues to deny that machine malfunction has ever been a legitimate problem. They say that the complaints are being fabricated by doctors and companies trying to avoid paying bills to Alcon.

According to the US Food and Drug Administration, the country’s regulatory body, the manufacturers of medical equipment are required to report any adverse effects that occur “with unexpected severity or frequency”.

In court documents, EBW, the company that used to lease the Ladarvision machine and which is locked in litigation with Alcon over unpaid bills, baldly alleges that the optical firm repeatedly told individuals who reported a laser problem that it was the first time they had heard of it.

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