As your patients celebrate another birthday milestone, they are again back in your chair wondering why their reading glasses mysteriously disappear when they are out exploring life or why their arms are not as long as they used to be.

Patient horror stories can happen at any time of the year, but late October makes these tales particularly chilling.

Recently, I received a progress note from a glaucoma surgeon concerning a patient whom he and I share. The patient is a 58-year-old African-American female with a longstanding history of primary open-angle glaucoma.

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

One of the hallmarks of a good college football team is to finish strong. That means that as the team heads into the fourth quarter, it needs to close out the game and play all the way to the end.

A companion bill to S. 2777 aims to hold online sellers of contact lenses accountable for deceptive or illegal sales tactics that may threaten patient health.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently brought together representatives from optometry and ophthalmology to discuss regulatory review of contact lenses and future medical devices to control the progression of myopia, primarily in children.

What do you think it would be like to practice in an environment free of competition? How about having a complete lock on a market?

We’re no exception to the online perfect perception. You only need to check out our practice Instagram page, @seeeyecareandeyewear, to see all the photos that I have painstakingly staged.

Know what your patients see when they purchase lens care products

Running for office, diversity in optometry, and mentoring students

Eyecare practitioners who deal with patients in the perioperative period are well aware of the need for topical therapy. In most cases, a combination of a steroid, a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID), and an antibiotic will be used for a few days before the day of surgery and then for a period afterward.

At her periodic eye examination, a female patient in her early 70s was discovered to have low-risk macular degeneration in each eye. Further evaluation revealed that her visual acuity (VA) was correctable to 20/25 in each eye.

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.

I recently had the opportunity to do something I’d never done before: attend a conference that had absolutely nothing to do with optometry. Now some of you will ask, “Don’t you go to enough of those things as it is?”

As a profession, we have seen the benefits of transitioning patients to contact lens modalities that are replaced frequently. Innovations in material technologies have allowed advanced designs, including greater oxygen permeability to provide a healthier, more comfortable wearing experience.

Current methodologies for surgically addressing presbyopia and new technologies that are shaping the process.

Ben Gaddie, OD, FAAO, Optometry Times Editorial Advisory Board member, noted several specific areas that were advancing to give ODs better data and better control over patient health outcomes, including: • Corneal mechanics • 24-hour IOP monitoring • New glaucoma drugs and drug delivery systems • Advancements in OCT imaging

Optometry Times keeps you in the know with four things you may have overlooked during the first few days of VEW 2016.