Does it ever make sense to use glasses that are “too strong”? In young patients whose eyes deviate out (instead of crossing in), eye doctors will sometimes use glasses that are designed to correct more near-sightedness than the patient actually has. The idea is that this stimulates patients to correct their own eyes against the…

In the May 2024 edition of the Journal of Cataract and Refractive Surgery, Dr. Andrew Mihalache and colleagues published a correspondence. Their article had to do with GPT-3.5 and GPT-4; they made inquiries of these two chatbots based on guidelines from the American Academy of Ophthalmology about cataracts and glaucoma. They found that GPT-4 did…

One of the diagnostic tests that is used for dry eye is placement of a paper strip in the eye. The idea is that the tears soak into the strip and along the strip, so the length of the strip that is soaked indicates something about tear quantity. In the May 2024 edition of the…

In the simplest sense, “farsighted” should mean able to see far away. Of course, the only reason to use the term is that it precludes being “all sighted,” or able to see far away and up close, so, presumably, someone who is farsighted has difficulty seeing up close. When we use the term in ophthalmology,…

Almost every time we do cataract surgery, we implant artificial lenses. I am often asked, “can this lens be replaced if I don’t like it?” Dr. Hyeck-Soo Son and colleagues published a study in the April 2024 edition of the Ophthalmology journal about lens exchanges. They looked at a very large number of lens exchanges,…

When we do cataract surgery, there are typically two or three small incisions that we make in the eyeball to access the cataract, which is inside the eyeball. The largest incision, often called the main incision, can be a variety of different sizes, usually around 2-3 millimeters wide. There are a lot of opinions on…

In the April 2024 edition of JAMA Ophthalmology, Dr. Tiarnan Keenan and colleagues published a paper that evaluated the use of minocycline for geographic atrophy. Minocycline is an antibiotic medication that is often also used for its anti-inflammatory properties. Geographic atrophy is a manifestation of severe dry macular degeneration. Inflammation is thought to be key…

In the April 2024 edition of the journal Cornea, Dr. Anne Marie Hagem and colleagues published a decrease in the rate of corneal transplants performed for keratoconus. Keratoconus is a disease in which the cornea changes shape, affecting the vision negatively. The “traditional” method of fixing poor vision from advanced keratoconus is a corneal transplant…

In the April 2024 edition of the Journal of Cataract and Refractive Surgery, Drs. Ryu Takabatake and Makiko Takahashi published an article that shows that abnormalities in the vitreous jelly of the eye significantly affects vision in eyes with presbyopia-correcting lens implants. Presbyopia-correcting lens implants placed after cataract surgery have somewhat sensitive optics, so it’s…

In the March 2024 edition of the Journal Cornea, Dr. Antonio Di Zazzo and colleagues published a study that demonstrated and increased prevalence of eye discomfort in patients with gastroesophageal reflux disease. In other words, people with reflux of stomach acid into their esophagus had more eye discomfort than those who didn’t. The authors suggest…