TLC and Newport Beach Doctor Set Sights on Merger

TLC The Laser Center Inc., expanding its national network of eye surgery centers across Southern California, said Tuesday it has agreed to form a joint venture with Newport Beach ophthalmologist Dr. Thomas S. Tooma.

Tooma, a laser eye surgeon, said the venture aims to establish at least a dozen surgery centers across the state in five years.

TLC, a publicly held company based in Mississauga, Ontario, operates 45 centers in the United States and Canada. In Southern California, TLC has centers in Brea, Irvine and La Jolla.

“California is a very underdeveloped market, but it probably has the best potential in all of North America because of its lifestyle and affluence,” said Elias Vamvakas, TLC’s chief executive.

The venture--owned 50.1% by TLC and 49.9% by Tooma--will include TLC’s California offices and Tooma’s practices in Newport Beach and San Bernardino. They hope they can expand together faster by collaborating, rather than competing, in a business that relies on high-priced lasers and experimental procedures to improve the vision of nearsighted people.

Tooma employs a laser for an increasingly popular procedure--laser in situ keratomileus (LASIK).

The procedure, gaining acceptance in the medical community, uses a laser’s light energy to correct nearsightedness. The beam breaks molecular bonds in eye tissue, enabling a surgeon to reshape the cornea.

Practitioners often use lasers that have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for a different procedure to fix nearsightedness--photorefractive keratectomy (PRK).

PRK uses a laser to correct the surface of the cornea, while LASIK reshapes deeper tissues.

Once regulators have allowed a manufacturer to market a device, such as a laser, for one application, physicians may choose to use the device in another way.

Proponents of LASIK say it lets the patient recover much faster and causes less pain than PRK. The August issue of Ophthalmology, the Journal of the American Academy of Ophthalmology, concluded that both techniques seem to be “relatively safe and effective” for correcting moderate to high myopia.

For practitioners such as Tooma, however, the equipment is so costly that some are looking for ways to link with partners to finance expansion. Tooma’s lasers include both FDA-approved models and a new experimental type that he’s testing as a clinician. His favorite--the experimental machine--cost $500,000, he says.

He performs about 6,000 procedures a year, charging $2,250 per eye.

TLC, founded six years ago, lost $9.5 million, or 34 cents a share, for the fiscal year ended May 31, on revenue of about $100 million.