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In the July 2023 edition of the journal Ophthalmology, Do Young Park and colleagues published a study that indicated that patients who develop glaucoma are at higher risk for developing dementia. This goes along with a general idea in ophthalmology that poorer vision leads to numerous other poor health outcomes. This may be particularly true…

Many patients go to see their eye doctors with ocular complaints such as burning, intermittent blurred vision, or tearing, and they are given a diagnosis of tear film dysfunction, which usually gets labeled as “dry eye.” The main treatment that they hear about and self-administer is lubrication via artificial tear eye drops. Artificial tears are…

In the July 2023 edition of the journal JAMA Ophthalmology, Antoine Benard and colleagues published a study regarding the cost effectiveness of cataract surgery done with the assistance of lasers. Cataract surgery is primarily done with ultrasound energy, but some surgeons incorporate the use of a laser in order to complete some of the preliminary…

Restasis eye drops offer a solution for tear film dysfunction, which can have many symptoms including blurred vision and pain. Restasis contains cyclosporine, an anti-inflammatory medication used in organ transplant rejection. Unlike artificial tears, Restasis works at the source of the problem by targeting the inflammation that disrupts tear production. By reducing inflammation, the eye’s…

The very front part of the eye, the cornea, has a rounded dome-like shape. The curvature of the dome, i.e. how steep the cornea is, varies among the population. Girish Valluru and colleagues published an article in the June 2023 edition of the Journal Cornea that tried to correlate different measures of the overall human…

In the May 2023 edition of the journal Cornea, Mona Amer and colleagues published a case report about using 5-fluorouracil as a treatment for Lisch Dystrophy. Lisch Dystrophy is a problem with the cornea in which the outer portion of the cornea can become opacified with a whorl like pattern. In the past, most attempts…

The Amsler Grid is a tool used by patients to possibly detect changes in the retina. It is literally a grid; obviously, a grid has lots of straight lines. Therefore, looking at a grid on a regular basis can reveal vision distortions. If the straight lines aren’t as straight as they are supposed to be,…

In the June 2023 edition of JAMA Ophthalmology, Andrew Mihalache and colleagues published a study in which they assessed the success of ChatGPT in answering ophthalmology questions. The authors used text-based questions from the company OphthoQuestions and found that ChatGPT answered 46% of the questions correctly. The authors concluded that “ChatGPT … did not answer…

“You’ll poke your eye out!” One of the most dreaded things that ophthalmologists see are injuries that create full thickness holes in the wall of the eyeball. We usually call these “open globe” injuries. Isaac Bleicher and colleagues published a study in the April 2023 issue of the journal Ophthalmology that re-affirmed and deepened knowledge…

In the May 2023 edition of the Journal of Cataract and Refractive Surgery, Anouar Elotmani and colleagues published an article about calculating IOL power in patients who have had SMILE. Wait a minute, what is SMILE? SMILE is a technique of altering the cornea to change glasses prescription. Unlike the better known LASIK, there is…