The use of robots in surgery has been known for decades. However, all of these robots seemed to me to be appropriate for macroscopic surgery–primarily abdominal surgery. In ophthalmology, we literally do our surgeries while looking through a microscope, so I didn’t think that there would be a robot to use for these surgeries. But…

This weekend, I was at a kids birthday party that my daughter was attending. I ended up in a conversation with other parents about someone who has “perfect eyesight” at age 39. I said, “prepare for whining coming soon. =)” People who have never had to wear glasses and have basically taken great eyesight for…

Usually, this is not a forum for me to pine for certain things or communicate my personal feelings about ideas that are not medical issues, but I am making an exception. There is a movie called “Caterpillar,” which I believe is being released (or perhaps re-released) in theaters this month. It relates to a cosmetic…

When performing cataract surgery, one of the steps that we commonly execute is called hydrodissection. The cataract is inside a capsule, and the cataract does not freely move within the capsule when we first encounter it during surgery. However, we can inject a water-based solution into the potential space between the cataract and capsule. By…

One of the most common complaints in my office is that people don’t like betadine in the eye. It burns like crazy! This is a well known fact; betadine does not feel good. But we need it! Betadine is one of the most well-known antiseptics, and, out of all available measures to decrease the likelihood…

I was recently speaking to a family member who was recounting her experience of seeing eye doctors. She had a visit in California, where she lives, and was told that she had a normal eye exam. She specifically asked about cataracts and was told she did not have any. At that time, everything seemed quite…

The term “monocular” refers to the condition in which someone has a large asymmetry between the eyes in terms of vision. Essentially, it means that one eye sees much better than the other, and the worse seeing eye actually has quite poor functional vision. In these scenarios, we ophthalmologists strongly recommend the use of glasses…

Today, I saw a patient on call. It was actually a great experience! Typically, we consider it to be a bit of an intrusion on our personal time to have to come into the hospital and see a patient. However, most of the time, it actually turns out to be wonderful–when patients know that we…

When we talk about transplants in the eye world, this usually means a transplant of the very front part of the eye, which is the cornea. Some patients think that the entire eye can be replaced, but that is not true. Transplanted corneas are like any other transplanted organ of the body; they are subject…

Have you ever heard of eye patching? Have you ever wondered what the heck it is all about? A very common type of patching is that which is used in children. There are a lot of nuances that can be present, but the general gist of treatment is to put the patch over the GOOD…