Moving Right Along . . .

In many ways the scene resembles any modern factory. A conveyor glides silently past five work stations, periodically stopping, then starting again. Each station is staffed by an attendant in a sterile mask and smock. The workers have just three minutes to complete their tasks before the conveyor moves on; they turn out 20 finished pieces in an hour.

Nearly everything else about the assembly line, however, is highly unusual: the workers are eye surgeons, and the conveyor carries human beings on stretchers. This is the Moscow Research Institute of Eye Microsurgery, where the production methods of Henry Ford are applied to the practice of medicine. The center is the brainchild of renowned Soviet Eye Surgeon Svyatoslav Fyodorov, 57, who calls it a "medical factory for the production of people with good eyesight."

The factory performs a variety of operations, including cataract removal, glaucoma surgery and the implantation of lenses. But the most popular procedure is radial keratotomy, in which a series of fine spokelike incisions are made on the cornea to correct myopia. In a recent two-month period, boasts Fyodorov, 20 institute surgeons handled 1,600 such operations "with only four minor complications." The treatment, which he helped develop, is still controversial in the U.S.

Soviet health officials hope to build more eye-operation factories around the country. The approach not only lowers costs, says Fyodorov, but may actually improve the quality of operations by permitting each surgeon "to perform the part of the operation that he does best." Someday, Fyodorov predicts, appendectomies and even heart surgery will be assembly-line products.