Uncategorized

I may have written about this before, but the topic tends to be a sustained cause of confusion. An eye can become inflamed if certain types of cells are redirected toward it from the rest of the body. These cells are often called inflammatory cells, which seems tautological in this context, but their presence really…

For any cornea transplant, there has to be an individual who is the donor. In the April 2025 edition of the journal Cornea, Abhishek Ramini and colleagues published a study related to donors diagnosed with sleep apnea. They found that donors who had sleep apnea provided corneas that had a lower cell count than those…

There are serious eye infections and not-so-serious eye infections. An example of a not-so-serious eye infection would be a common viral conjunctivitis–pink eye. In viral conjunctivitis, it is quite unlikely that there will be permanent consequences and quite likely that the infection will resolve on its own. An example of a common serious eye infection…

One retinal disease that all eye doctors know about is retinitis pigmentosa (RP). It is a very common inherited retinal disease, and, in some ways, may be thought of as the quintessential inherited retinal disease. Unfortunately, there is no good treatment for it. As an ophthalmologic community, we have heard a lot about use of…

One of the most dreaded moments during cataract surgery is the discovery of zonular instability. The zonules hold the capsule in place. The capsule contains the cataract. Since the goal of cataract surgery is usually to take the cataract out of the capsule and the place an artificial lens implant into the capsule, having a…

I often hear from cataract surgery patients that they don’t want to “ruin their surgery” and have to “do it again.” Well, it turns out that you can’t have cataract surgery again, and any further surgery is usually much more involved and risky. For example, in the February edition of the Journal of Cataract &…

In the February 2025 edition of the Journal Ophthalmology, Dr. Yael Lustig-Barzelay and colleagues published a study about xanthelasma and dyslipidemia. Xanthelasmas of the eyelids are fairly common; they are yellow plaques that frequently form on the nasal side of the eyelids. They are fatty deposits, so there have been studies that have tried to…

In the February 2025 edition of the Journal Cornea, Dr. Tae Eun Lee and colleagues published a study regarding Herpes Simplex virus. The study included over 8 million people. Herpes Simplex virus can cause a recurrent disease of the cornea. The study authors found that those who received Covid-19 vaccination had a higher chance of…

I sometimes have to talk to my patients about corneal transplants. I explain that this is, indeed, a literal transplant, in which someone else’s cornea gets placed in their eye. Where do the corneas come from? They come from donors! The processing of the tissue is done by eye banks, which recover, store, and distribute…

In the January 2025 issue of the journal Ophthalmology, Dr. Tiarnan Keenan and colleagues published a study about vitamin use in macular degeneration. Over the last couple of years, there has been a lot of interest in medications used to decrease geographic atrophy progression. Geographic atrophy is a manifestation of macular degeneration, and there are…