Archive for October 2022

Iris Defects

The iris is the colored part of the eye. In addition to giving people character to their eyes that they love to discuss (e.g. “brilliant blue eyes”), the iris controls light entry into the eye. Regulation of how much light reaches the light-sensing cells in the retina is important, so people who have damage to…

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Astigmatism

The very front part of the eyeball is the cornea, which I sometimes liken to a “windshield” over the eye. If there is not perfect radial symmetry of the cornea, we say that there is astigmatism. The most common form of astigmatism is one steep axis perpendicular to one flat axis–sometimes we say this is…

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The Gift that Keeps on Giving

There is a procedure that is now not commonly done in ophthalmology called radial keratotomy. When RK is initially done, it gives a pretty nice result for correcting the need for glasses in near-sighted individuals. However, as time goes on, the vision becomes less and less desirable. The biggest problems that I see with RK…

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Oleander

The October 2022 edition of the journal Cornea contains an article by Dr. Prashant Tailor and colleagues. It describes a patient who was injured in the eye by an oleander leaf. Plant-related injuries to the eye often require different treatment than other injuries to the eye. In this case, the patient developed severe swelling of…

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The EyeNinja

I just discovered a video from Dr. Lawrence Tenkman, the EyeNinja. He is an incredible communicator and very funny! The video that I saw was definitely mostly directed toward ophthalmologists, but when people are that good at communication, it seems a shame to keep the audience so limited. It is a good lesson to all…

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