Dry Eye

The ocular surface encompasses not only the cornea, but the all-important supporting conjunctiva that is divided into the bulbar, limbal, palpebral, forneaceal, and marginal zones.

In the past when you thought of Jennifer Aniston, the girl-next-door character Rachel from Friends would come to mind.

A day in the life of a female patient provides clues that can help

With the exponential increase of interest in dry eye or ocular surface disease (OSD) among physicians and the industry, we are fortunate to have access to exciting new diagnostic and imaging technology as well as new treatment options and therapeutics for some of our most frustrated patients.

There are four reasons to opt for a compounding pharmacy instead of reach for your Rx pad: strength, form, ingredients, and function.

Dr. Scott Schachter offers advice on how to better manage non-symptomatic dry eye patients and encourage them to comply with your treatment plan

Adding this technology can improve your diagnosis and better educate your patients

Contact lens wearers are dropping out for comfort and vision reasons. Contact lenses can be considered a significant cause of these symptoms if they contribute to an unstable tear film or trigger inflammatory reactions.

In order to properly care for our contact lens patients, we have to take responsibility for the changes that are occurring in the tear film under the lens.

Sjögren’s syndrome is underdiagnosed and seriously impacts the ocular surface and quality of life and places the patient at risk for multisystem involvement. Optometry’s role in identification, diagnosis and collaborative long-term management is an important one. Earlier attention to symptoms leading to diagnosis and collaboration with other health professionals will ensure better quality of life for our patients.

The recent announcement that 1-800 Contacts has partnered with online eye exam provider Opternative to offer consumers eye exams online has rocked the optometry community. What can we learn from this announcement, and what should we do?

The Tear Film and Ocular Surface Society’s Meibomian Gland Workshop was tasked to sort through the literature to determine proper terminology of conditions affecting the lid margin. Review the terminology, gland anatomy, gland expression classifications, and treatment strategies.

Did you ever consider that those tools in your dry eye arsenal are also good for acutely sick eyes? I recently had a patient who drove this point home…even to my ophthalmology partner.

Shire plc obtained U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval for Xiidra (lifitegrast ophthalmic solution) 5%, a twice-daily eye drop indicated for the treatment of the signs and symptoms of dry eye disease in adult patients.

Blepharitis is an inflammatory condition of the eyelids leading to red, irritated, itchy, and dandruff-like scales that form on the eyelashes.

Ron Melton, OD, FAAO, and Randall Thomas, OD, MPH, FAAO, discussed common practices for treating dry eye, meibomian gland dysfunction (MGD), and blepharitis at the American Optometric Association (AOA) annual meeting. Here are a few medical management pearls from their discussion.

Certainly, one would assume that nothing could be safer than a product designed for use with children. Television commercials with smiling, happy babies covered in frothy bubbles imply the product is harmless. Ubiquitous marketing alone creates a subconscious sense of safety for both doctor and patient.

I was once characterized as an “information parasite” by a colleague. I must admit that I do troll the Internet, particularly Pub Med, for new, intriguing information especially when its related to one of my two favorite ocular phenomenon that are pseudoexfoliation syndrome and the lid margin.

Point-of-care (POC) diagnostic laboratory testing is not common in eye care. This is not due to any lack of clinical need-it is rather the result of a lack of specific tests known to demonstrate diagnostic and/or treatment relevance to the optometrist and a general resistance to adopting new diagnostic technologies.

It’s been a busy week for ophthalmology research and news after both the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) annual meeting in Seattle and the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery (ASCRS) annual meeting in New Orleans.

Dry eye represents a major opportunity with more than 25 million people suffering from the condition in the U.S.,1 and meibomian gland dysfunction (MGD) is thought to be the most common cause of dry eye.2 During a session at SECO, Walt Whitley, OD, MBA, FAAO, shared his tips for making the most of this opportunity in your practice.

Mass media and medical publications have been warning for years that the incidence of diabetes is rising rapidly and predicting a “health catastrophe” in which more than 10 percent of the U.S. population would be living with this disease.

While many eyecare practitioners (ECPs) are just now learning about Demodex infestation of the eyelids and adnexa, the fact is that this condition has been around for as long as mankind. The entomologists Johannsen and Riley from Cornell University first described the species in detail anatomically as early as 1915, but it wasn’t until the 1960s that clinical reports of demodex-related blepharitis began to emerge in the literature.

First acquired during birth from the mother and rapidly thereafter from the surrounding environment, bacteria colonize our conjunctiva and lacrimal systems. It is estimated that more than 200 species of bacteria commonly inhabit the human conjunctival mucosa.