Keratoconus is a disease of the eye in which the cornea, the very front part of the eye, becomes misshapen. Specifically, the cornea becomes more and more cone-shaped. Dr. Tessnim Ahmad and colleagues published a study in the Journal Cornea in January 2023. Their study concerned correlates of progression of keratoconus. One of the findings…

Charles Bonnet syndrome is the term that is used to describe visual perceptions without physical substrate in the setting of poor ocular health. Basically, the eye that does not function well sends incomplete/inaccurate data to the brain, and the brain “conjures up” images by trying to create sensible images out of that imperfect data. In…

People who complete long missions into Space can get swelling of their optic nerve in the eye. The optic nerve is the “cable” that connects the eye to the brain, so that the information received by the eye can be processed appropriately. In the December 2022 edition of JAMA Ophthalmology, Dr. Laura Pardon and colleagues…

What is Peters anomaly? This is a very fair question, as most people have never heard of this corneal disease of the eye. One of the main aspects of Peters anomaly is a central white spot in the very front part of the eye (the cornea). There are also adhesions between the colored part of…

In the December 2022 edition of the journal Cornea, Silvana Schonit and colleagues published an article showing that corneal guttata are transplanted in about 15% of penetrating keratoplasty grafts. What the heck does that mean? Penetrating keratoplasty grafts are full thickness cornea transplants. In an idealized world, cornea transplants are always perfect pristine tissue samples…

Typically, ophthalmologists like to discuss subjects that they feel to be weighty, such as what to do with this disease or what to do about that surgery. This includes considering even the minutiae of very specific techniques and hand positioning. Today, I read a discussion about what the best type of slip-on shoe is. Admittedly,…

There is an association between thyroid disorders and ocular disorders. The “classic” association is between overactive thyroid and eyes bulging out. In the November 2022 issue of the journal JAMA Ophthalmology, Dr. Yuan Pan and colleagues published a study that indicated that oral doxycycline might improve some of the symptoms of this thyroid eye disease,…

In the November 2022 edition of the journal Ophthalmology, Dr. Golnoush Mahmoudinezhad and colleagues published a study that indicated that heavy smokers with glaucoma are more likely to lose visual field than non-smokers. Glaucoma is a disease the affects the optic nerve in the eye and causes loss of side vision before central vision. That’s…

In the November 2022 edition of the journal Cornea, Aditya Ghorpade and colleagues report a case of a fungus. A fungus? Oh, yes, there is a fungus among us, and that fungus has shown that it can infect humans. It is actually well known in ophthalmology that fungal infections of the cornea occur, and they…

The iris is the colored part of the eye. In addition to giving people character to their eyes that they love to discuss (e.g. “brilliant blue eyes”), the iris controls light entry into the eye. Regulation of how much light reaches the light-sensing cells in the retina is important, so people who have damage to…