I recently learned that there may be something coming out soon to help us with cataract surgery in irregular corneas, which is very exciting! But wait… what is an irregular cornea? It’s actually a little bit harder to explain that I thought it would be, because there are different patterns of regularity. The cornea is,…

I have mentioned it before in my blog, but neovascularization is such a big problem when it happens that I can’t keep my mouth shut about it. The word is a combination of “neo” (meaning “new”) and “vascularization” (meaning growth of blood vessels). One of the major complications of diseases of the eye, especially retinal…

There is a part of our eyes called the lens, which, seemingly appropriately, people commonly believe is responsible for focusing light coming into the eye onto the retina. However, having done a cornea fellowship, I would be remiss if I did not point out that more of the focusing of light coming into the eye…

As of the writing of this post, there is a widespread understanding that, across many industries in the U.S., there is a labor shortage. Everyone needs more help! Sometimes it doesn’t seem apparent, but an ophthalmology office is also subject to these same factors, since we have staff who answer the phones and staff that…

There is a condition of the cornea, the part of the eye nearest and dearest to my heart, that has a peculiar and interesting name: crocodile shagreen. Crocodile shagreen is an appearance of the cornea that we see when examining eyes under the microscope. It is not something that typically elicits a visit on the…

I recently read an article by Rui Fan and colleagues about the detection of glaucoma by a computer in patients with high eye pressures. By way of background, the internal pressure of the eyeball is typically somewhere in the range of 10-20 mmHg above atmospheric pressure. When the pressure in the eye goes up, we…

Today, I saw an entry in the American Journal of Ophthalmology. This is a report published by Dr. Hasenin Al-khersan and colleagues. The article describes two patients who had retinal detachments after use of pilocarpine 1.25% eye drops, which were started for presbyopia. Presbyopia, in basic terms, is the medical term for “needing reading glasses.”…

I’ve recently seen a number of patients who have had foreign bodies in their eyes. A foreign body is exactly what it sounds like–any object that is not really supposed to be in one’s eye that ends up there. Even the smallest of foreign bodies can cause a lot of irritation, and often they are…

Though I’ve covered this topic before, it is certainly an important one in ophthalmology. Most of the time, a feeling of “scratchy eyes” is caused by an inadequate tear film. The principal reason that one may have an inadequate tear film is due to improper tear film composition. In other words, it is more common…

You may be familiar with a particular type of contact lens that is smaller and more rigid than “typical” contact lenses. Those “typical” contact lenses that are the current market leaders are generally referred to as soft contact lenses. I, preferring simple nomenclature, call the other lenses hard contact lenses, though they can also be…