Cataract surgery has clearly advanced in technology, surgical techniques, IOLs and ophthalmic viscosurgical devices. This means our patients are seeing much better than their parents did after cataract surgery. With such advances in cataract surgery, t…
OCT uses a relatively long wavelength near infrared light to create a three-dimensional high-resolution cross-sectional image of tissue. The light collected to create the images is reflected or backscattered from the tissue. OCT can image both transparent and opaque tissue and routinely penetrate 500 µm to as much as 1,000 µm into tissue. A typical OCT device used in an ophthalmology practice today has a resolution in the 10-µm range. Thus, a single cell such as a retinal ganglion cell, photoreceptor, retinal pigment epithelial cell or corneal epithelial/keratocyte/endothelial cell can be imaged.This technology, provided to ophthalmologists primarily by Zeiss, Heidelberg, Topcon and Optovue has revolutionized our diagnostic capability. Nearly every ophthalmology practice in the U.S. utilizes OCT on a daily basis in the clinic and even in the operating room for femtosecond laser-assisted cataract surgery. Now we have even more exciting advances coming to enhance our diagnostic ability.
Final visual acuity significantly improved after small-gauge vitrectomy in patients with epiretinal membrane and good preoperative visual acuity, according to a study.Compared with traditional 20-gauge vitrectomy, 25-gauge vitrectomy may be similarly e…
September’s announcement by Carl Zeiss Meditec that its AngioPlex OCT angiography technology had received 510(k) clearance from the FDA set the stage for other systems to likely also soon become commercialized in the U.S. The technology allows extreme close-up imaging of the retinal vasculature for assessing retinal vascular diseases and holds potential for guiding treatment decisions and monitoring patient responses to therapy.“Over the past 20 years, OCT has developed rapidly as a ‘noninvasive’ method of imaging for medical diagnosis and defining activity criteria, such as intra/subretinal fluid, hyper-reflective dots and dense intraretinal areas,” Gabriel J. Coscas, MD, emeritus professor of ophthalmology at the University of Paris XII in Créteil, France, said. But over the past 2 years, it was found that additional information useful for treatment decisions can now be gained with OCT angiography (OCTA).
LASIK alone reduced biomechanics in the treatment of high myopia, whereas LASIK with concurrent corneal cross-linking increased corneal stromal rigidity, according to results of an ex vivo study presented at the European Society of Cataract and Refract…
In order to build a true dry eye practice, it is first necessary to make an open commitment to care for the dry eye patient. As pointed out in part 1 of this series, if you build a dry eye practice, dry eye patients will find you and they will come to your practice. In part 2, I will explore how to develop a traditional dry eye practice. The protocols for this type of practice can easily be layered onto your existing exams and can be done so without making any capital investments.The nuts and bolts of a traditional dry eye practice are actually the building blocks on which an advanced dry eye practice is built. Every aspect of the traditional dry eye practice is a necessary part of comprehensive dry eye referral practices. Perhaps a better name than “traditional” might be “foundational.” Not unlike my beloved fitness program CrossFit, all of the individual “pieces/parts” of your new dry eye service are already in place. The magic will be in how you utilize these elements as a more effective whole, just as the magic of CrossFit is in how traditional exercises are combined in a unique fashion to more efficiently increase fitness.