Recently, I learned that some corneal surgeons recommend that their corneal transplant patients increase their steroid eye drops around the time of a flu vaccination. It seems like there is no established/well-studied connection between flu shots and transplant rejection, but there are some reports. I think that it is certainly reasonable to increase steroid eye…

Recently, I heard of a patient who improved her dry eye-related pain by using clarified butter, or ghee, in her eye. She had a chronic course of pain related to the dry eye and had tried multiple therapies. Nothing seemed to work as well as the ghee. I have to say that I am very…

One of the most valuable things that I think we do as physicians is discuss our practices with each other to propagate knowledge and improve as a community. That is why I was sad to find out that my favorite listserv for discussion of ophthalmology recently decided to shut down. However, I might be saved…

There is some concern on the part of laser eye surgeons that performing laser vision correction may be higher risk in patients with a history of forming keloids. Keloids are a form of raised scar, and the theoretical link is that these patients have a higher scar forming tendency and therefore might get scarring in…

The prevailing historical thought in laser vision correction is that one should not perform laser vision correction on a patient who is breastfeeding as there can be hormonal effects on the cornea, so the vision correction may not work as intended. There have been some recent articles and opinions that this may not be necessary…

When someone says “eye tattoo,” there are different things that they may be referring too. In this case, I am only referring to a procedure that is known as corneal tattooing. Corneal tattooing is most often done for problems of the iris, which is the colored part of the eye. Why? One of the functions…

Certainly there are some medical decisions that are incorrect, no matter how they are sliced. However, I often find that it is important to understand that different people have different ways of doing things, and there frequently isn’t any good way to dismiss one way or the other as “wrong.” Approaches to medicine are sometimes…

There is a procedure in ophthalmology called “anterior stromal puncture.” In this procedure, the front of the eye is literally poked over and over with a needle. While it may seem like a “low tech” procedure, it can really help in certain situations. An example of such a situation would be one in which someone…

There have been some patients recently coming into the office with large pupils. These patients have often been young patients who are teenagers. The pupils are larger than normal and don’t react to light very much (normally the pupils should react to light by shrinking). It seems that these patients have large pupils due to…

One of the costs of doing business is that sometimes patients with scheduled appointments will not appear. There is a name on the schedule, but no patient arrives. This can be due to different factors, but sometimes patients know they have appointments and just decide not to come. As I mentioned, we think of this…