Vision Source Philly Blog

New Glaucoma Test Allows Earlier, More Accurate Detection

noreply@blogger.com (Your Vision Source Doctor) — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 13:07:00 +0000

New Glaucoma Test Allows Earlier, More Accurate Detection

Cumbersome Glaucoma tests that require a visit to the ophthalmologist could soon be history thanks to a home test developed by a UA engineer.

Phoenix ophthalmologist Dr. Gholan Peyman demonstrates a prototype Glaucoma test instrument that's noninvasive and simpler to use than current procedures. It can also be used in situations that are difficult or impossible with current tests. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Arizona College of Engineering)

The self-test instrument has been designed in Eniko Enikov's lab at the UA College of Engineering. Gone are the eye drops and need for a sterilized sensor. In their place is an easy-to-use probe that gently rubs the eyelid and can be used at home.

"You simply close your eye and rub the eyelid like you might casually rub your eye," said Enikov, a professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering. "The instrument detects the stiffness and, therefore, infers the intraocular pressure." Enikov also heads the Advanced Micro and Nanosystems Laboratory.

While the probe is simple to use, the technology behind it is complex, involving a system of micro-force sensors, specially designed microchips, and math-based procedures programmed into its memory.

Enikov began working on the probe four years ago in collaboration with Dr. Gholan Peyman, a Phoenix ophthalmologist. "We went through several years of refinement and modifications to arrive at the current design," Enikov noted.

The National Science Foundation has funded the work, and Enikov and Peyman now are seeking investors to help fund final development and commercialization of the product.

In addition to screening for Glaucoma, an eye disease that can lead to blindness if left untreated, the device corrects some problems with the current procedure, and can be used to measure drainage of intraocular fluid.

"Eye pressure varies over a 24-hour cycle," Enikov said. "So it could be low at the doctor's office and three hours later it might be high. With only a single test, the doctor might miss the problem. Having the ability to take more frequent tests can lead to earlier detection in some cases."

Once the diagnosis is made, several treatments are available. The question then is: How effective are they? Patients could use the probe at home to trace how much the pressure decreases after using eye drop medications, for instance.

"One of the reasons pressure builds up in the eye is because fluid doesn't drain properly," Enikov noted. "Currently, there are no methods available to test drainage."

Current tests require applying pressure directly to the cornea, but only very light pressure is safe to use, and it doesn't cause the fluid to drain.

"Our technique allows us to apply slightly greater pressure, but it's still not uncomfortable," he said. "It's equivalent to rubbing your eye for a brief period to find out if the pressure changes. If it does, we know by how much and if there is a proper outflow of intraocular fluid."

Sometimes, a surgical shunt is used to help fluid drain from the eye. "The problem with Glaucoma shunts is they can plug up over time," Enikov noted. "Or if they're not properly installed, they may drain too quickly. So you would want to know how well the shunt is working and if it is properly installed. Our device could help answer those questions."

In another scenario, certain patients cannot be tested for Glaucoma using currently available procedures. "If a patient had cataract surgery or some other surgery through the cornea, the cornea sometimes thickens," Enikov said. "The cornea's structure is different, but our test remains accurate because it's not applied to the cornea."

Instead, it presses the entire eyeball, much as you might press a balloon to determine its stiffness.

"The innovation with our device is that it's noninvasive, simpler to use and applies to a variety of situations that are either difficult to address or impossible to test using the current procedures," Enikov said. "That's why we're so excited about this probe. It has great potential to improve medical care, and significant commercial possibilities, as well."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110104101331.htm

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Arizona College of Engineering. The original article was written by Ed Stiles.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

The Pupils Are the Windows to the Mind

noreply@blogger.com (Your Vision Source Doctor) — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 19:11:00 +0000

Untitled Document

The Pupils Are the Windows to the Mind

The eyes are the window into the soul -- or at least the mind, according to a new paper published in Perspectives on Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Measuring the diameter of the Pupil, the part of the eye that changes size to let in more light, can show what a person is paying attention to. Pupillometry, as it's called, has been used in social psychology, clinical psychology, humans, animals, children, infants -- and it should be used even more, the authors say.

The Pupil is best known for changing size in reaction to light. In a dark room, your Pupils open wide to let in more light; as soon as you step outside into the sunlight, the Pupils shrink to pinpricks. This keeps the retina at the back of the eye from being overwhelmed by bright light. Something similar happens in response to psychological stimuli, says Bruno Laeng of the University of Oslo, who cowrote the paper with Sylvain Sirois of Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières and Gustaf Gredebäck of Uppsala University in Sweden. When someone sees something they want to pay closer attention to, the Pupil enlarges. It's not clear why this happens, Laeng says. "One idea is that, by essentially enlarging the field of the visual input, it's beneficial to visual exploration," he says.

However it works, psychological scientists can use the fact that people's Pupils widen when they see something they're interested in.

Laeng has used Pupil size to study people who had damage to the hippocampus, which usually causes very severe amnesia. Normally, if you show one of these patients a series of pictures, then take a short break, then show them another series of pictures, they don't know which ones they've seen before and which ones are new. But Laeng measured patients' Pupils while they did this test and found that the patients did actually respond differently to the pictures they had seen before. "In a way, this is good news, because it shows that some of the brains of these patients, unknown to themselves, is actually capable of making the distinction," he says.

Pupil measurement might also be useful for studying babies. Tiny infants can't tell you what they're paying attention to. "Developmental psychologists have used all kinds of methods to get this information without using language," Laeng says. Seeing what babies are interested in can give clues to what they're able to recognize -- different shapes or sounds, for example. A researcher might show a child two images side by side and see which one they look at for longer. Measuring the size of a baby's Pupils could do the same without needing a comparison.

The technology already exists for measuring Pupils -- many modern psychology studies use eye-tracking technology, for example, to see what a subject is looking at, and Laeng and his coauthors hope to convince other psychological scientists to use this method.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120127162800.htm

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Association for Psychological Science.

Do your eyes hold the secret of life?

noreply@blogger.com (Your Vision Source Doctor) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 01:41:00 +0000

In the future, patients in need of perfectly matched neural stem cells may not need to look any further than their own eye.

Researchers reporting in the January issue of Cell Stem Cell, a Cell Press publication, have identified adult stem cells of the central nervous system in a single layer of cells at the back of the eye.

That cell layer, known as the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE), underlies and supports photoreceptors in the light-sensitive retina. Without it, photoreceptors and vision are lost. The new study shows that the RPE also harbors self-renewing stem cells that can wake up to produce actively growing cultures when placed under the right conditions. They can also be coaxed into forming other cell types.

"You can get these cells from a 99-year-old," said Sally Temple of the Neural Stem Cell Institute in Rensselaer, New York. "These cells are laid down in the embryo and can remain dormant for 100 years. Yet you can pull them out and put them in culture and they begin dividing. It is kind of mind boggling."

Temple's group got the RPE-derived stem cells they describe from the eye of donors in the hours immediately after their deaths. But the cells can also be isolated from the fluid that surrounds the retina at the back of the eye, which means they are accessible in living people as well.

"You can literally go in and poke a needle in the eye and get these cells from the subretinal space," she says. "It sounds awful, but retinal surgeons do it every day." By comparison, access to most other neural stem cell populations would require major surgery.

Temple said they were curious about the proliferative potential of the RPE given that the tissue is known to be capable of regenerating entire retinas in salamanders. But that plasticity in adulthood had seemed to be lost in mice and chicks. Still, "given the evolutionary evidence, we thought it was worth revisiting," she said.

They placed RPE tissue taken from 22-year-old to 99-year-old cadavers into many culture conditions to see what they could make the cells do. They found one set of conditions that got the cells dividing. Not all of the RPE cells have this regenerative potential, but perhaps 10 percent of them do.

Further work showed that the cells are multipotent, which means that they can form different cell types, though the researchers admit there is more to do to fully explore the cells' differentiation capacity.

There are other implications as well. For example, these cells may explain diseases in which other tissue types show up in the eye. Their presence also suggests that there might be some way to stimulate controlled repair of the eye in the millions of people who suffer from age-related macular degeneration.

"I think it might be possible," Temple said.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120105131637.htm

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Cell Press, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

Glaucoma, the silent thief...

noreply@blogger.com (Your Vision Source Doctor) — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 21:43:00 +0000

When it comes to whether or not you will develop exfoliation syndrome (ES) -- an eye condition that is a leading cause of secondary open-angle glaucoma and increased risk of cataract as well as cataract surgery complications -- age, gender and where you live does matter.

"Although many studies from around the world have reported on the burden of the disease, some aspects of the basic descriptive epidemiologic features, which may help shed light on the cause, are inconsistent," said Louis Pasquale, M.D., study co-author and director of Massachusetts eye and Ear's glaucoma Center of Excellence. "In this study we found that women are more vulnerable to this disease then men, that ES is not a disease of Norwegian descent, and that where you live does matter when it comes to developing the disease."

Researchers from the Mass. eye and Ear, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Mass., Department of Medicine, Channing Laboratory, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, Mass., Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, and University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich., set out to find out how demographic and geographic risk factors are associated with ES. Their study, the "Demographic and Geographic Features of Exfoliation glaucoma in two United States-Based Prospective Cohorts" is published in the January 2012 issue of Ophthalmology.

Researchers used data from 78,955 women in the Nurses' Health Study (NHS) and 41,191 men in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study (HPFS) residing throughout the continental United States who were prospectively followed for 20 years or more and who provided lifetime residence information to examine the descriptive epidemiologic features of ES or exfoliation glaucoma suspect (EGS).

This study confirmed established associations with age and family history and exfoliation glaucoma or exfoliation glaucoma suspect (EG/EGS), as well as provided new data on associations with gender, eye color and ancestry. "Importantly, those with a lifetime residential history of living in the middle tier and south tier of the United States was associated with 47% and 75% reduced risks, respectively, compared with living in the northern tier, and across the life span, residence at age 15 was the most strongly associated with risk, followed by current residence," the authors wrote.

The study showed an increased risk in females, but it was unclear as if gender-specific differences in the eye, such as axial length differences or environmental factors related to lifestyle, account for why women are more at risk for this disease.

Other findings include:

A positive family history of glaucoma was associated with a more than doubling of risk.

Neither Scandinavian decent nor Southern European ancestry was associated with risk when compared with the larger reference group of mainly other white persons in the study, which indicates that there may be strong environmental factors that may increase risk among populations in Scandinavian countries. Overall the study lacked adequate power to determine whether incidence rates differed by minority groups.

Iris ( eye) color did not seem to be a risk factor.

"This large prospective cohort study demonstrates that there is a positive association between latitude and ES risk that is robust and not related to demographic features or other systemic covariates," Dr. Pasquale explained. "Another manuscript we published recently suggests that lower ambient temperature interacts with increased solar exposure to increase the risk of ES. This new work demonstrates a relation between increasing latitude and a condition with a strong predisposition to glaucoma. More work is needed to determine how environmental factors conspire to contribute to ES."

According to the National eye Institute, ES is the major known cause of open-angle glaucoma, and is one of the leading causes of blindness. With the rapid aging of the U.S. population, the number of individuals affected by the disease will increase to more than three million by 2020.

ScienceDaily (Jan. 1, 2012) —

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120101143342.htm

The above story is reprinted from materials provided byMassachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

Computer Vision Research: Do You See What I See?

noreply@blogger.com (Your Vision Source Doctor) — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 14:44:00 +0000

An essential question confronting neuroscientists and computer vision researchers alike is how objects can be identified by simply "looking" at an image. Introspectively, we know that the human brain solves this problem very well. We only have to look at something to know what it is.

But teaching a computer to "know" what it's looking at is far harder. In research published this fall in thePublic Library of Science (PLoS) Computational Biology journal, a team from Los Alamos National Laboratory, Chatham University, and Emory University first measured human performance on a visual task ‑ identifying a certain kind of shape when an image is flashed in front of a viewer for a very short amount of time (20-200 milliseconds). Human performance gets worse, as expected, when the image is shown for shorter time periods. Also as expected, humans do worse when the shapes are more complicated.

But could a computer be taught to recognize shapes as well, and then do it faster than humans? The team tried developing a computer model based on human neural structure and function, to do what we do, and possibly do it better.

Their paper, "Model Cortical Association Fields Account for the Time Course and Dependence on Target Complexity of Human Contour Perception," describes how, after measuring human performance, they created a computer model to also attempt to pick out the shapes.

"This model is biologically inspired and relies on leveraging lateral connections between neurons in the same layer of a model of the human visual system," said Vadas Gintautas of Chatham University in Pittsburgh and formerly a researcher at Los Alamos.

Neuroscientists have characterized neurons in the primate visual cortex that appear to underlie object recognition, noted senior author Garrett Kenyon of Los Alamos. "These neurons, located in the inferotemporal cortex, can be strongly activated when particular objects are visible, regardless of how far away the objects are or how the objects are posed, a phenomenon referred to as viewpoint invariance."

The brain has an uncanny ability to detect and identify certain things, even if they're barely visible. Now the challenge is to get computers to do the same thing. And programming the computer to process the information laterally, like the brain does, might be a step in the right direction.

How inferotemporal neurons acquire their viewpoint invariant properties is unknown, but many neuroscientists point to the hierarchical organization of the human visual cortex as likely being an essential aspect.

"Lateral connections have been generally overlooked in similar models designed to solve similar tasks. We demonstrated that our model qualitatively reproduces human performance on the same task, both in terms of time and difficulty. Although this is certainly no guarantee that the human visual system is using lateral interactions in the same way to solve this task, it does open up a new way to approach object detection problems," Gintautas said.

Simple features, such as particular edges of the image in a specific orientation, are extracted at the first cortical processing stage, called the primary visual cortex, or V1. Then subsequent cortical processing stages, V2, V4, etc., extract progressively more complex features, culminating in the inferotemporal cortex where that essential "viewpoint invariant object identification" is thought to occur. But, most of the connections in the human brain do not project up the cortical hierarchy, as might be expected from gross neuroanatomy, but rather connect neurons located at the same hierarchical level, called lateral connections, and also project down the cortical hierarchy to lower processing levels.

In the recently published work, the team modeled lateral interactions between cortical edge detectors to determine if such connections could explain the difficulty and time course of human contour perception. This research thus combined high-performance computer simulations of cortical circuits, using a National Science Foundation funded neural simulation toolbox, called PetaVision, developed by LANL researchers, along with "speed-of-sight" psychophysical measurements of human contour perception. The psychophysical measurements refer to an experimental technique that neuroscientists use to study mechanisms of cortical processing, using the open-source Psychtoolbox software as an advanced starting point.

"Our research represented the first example of a large-scale cortical model being used to account for both the overall accuracy, as well as the processing time, of human subjects performing a challenging visual-perception task," said Kenyon.

ScienceDaily (Dec. 21, 2011) —

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided byDOE/Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

Gene therapy to treat diseases that cause blindness.

noreply@blogger.com (Your Vision Source Doctor) — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000

cornea Gene Discovery Reveals Why Humans See Clearly

A transparent cornea is essential for vision, which is why the eye has evolved to nourish the cornea without blood vessels. But for millions of people around the world, diseases of the eye or trauma spur the growth of blood vessels and can cause blindness.

A new Northwestern Medicine study has identified a gene that plays a major role in maintaining clarity of the cornea in humans and mice -- and could possibly be used as gene therapy to treat diseases that cause blindness. The paper is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"We believe we've discovered the master regulator gene that prevents the formation of blood vessels in the eye and protects the clarity of the cornea," said lead author Tsutomu Kume, associate professor of medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and a researcher at Feinberg Cardiovascular Research Institute.

The existence of the gene, FoxC1, was previously known, but its role in maintaining a clear cornea is a new finding. Working with a special breed of mice that are missing this gene, Kume and colleagues found abnormal vascular formations, or blood vessels, streaking their corneas and blocking light.

When Kume discovered the corneal blood vessels in the mutant mice, he called a collaborator at the University of Alberta in Canada, Ordan Lehmann, MD, professor of ophthalmology and medical genetics.

Lehmann found that his patients who have a single copy of this mutated FoxC1 gene -- and who have congenital glaucoma -- also have abnormal blood vessel growth in their eyes.

"The exciting thing is by showing the loss of FoxC1 causes vascularization of the cornea, it means increasing levels of the gene might help prevent the abnormal growth of blood vessels, potentially in multiple eye disorders that cause blindness," said Lehmann, a coauthor on the paper. "That's the hope." One possible use might be in corneal transplants, he said, where the growth of new blood vessels onto the transplanted cornea is a major problem.

Kume next plans to test the gene therapy in mice to see if injecting FoxC1 inhibits the formation of blood vessels in the cornea.

The research is funded by National Institutes of Health and Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

ScienceDaily (Dec. 12, 2011)

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111212153121.htm

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided byNorthwestern University. The original article was written by Marla Paul.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

Here are nine ways you can use your Flex Spending Account on vision-related needs before you lose your dollars for good.

noreply@blogger.com (Your Vision Source Doctor) — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 16:30:00 +0000

Prescription Sunglasses: Because prescription sunglasses are considered medical devices, they qualify as an eligible Flex purchase. So if you’ve been dying to add a great pair of designer prescription sunglasses to your eyewear collection, now is the time. Any sunglass frame qualifies — including designer sunglasses — just as long as they contain valid prescription lenses

Prescription Eyeglasses or Reading glasses: Like prescription sunglasses, eye glasses are medical devices. So Flex funds can be spent on both prescription lenses and the frames to hold the lenses. If you’ve been putting off getting a new pair of prescription glasses, December is a great time to get an eye exam and upgrade your eyewear. If you’ve recently purchased a pair of “everyday” eyeglasses, you might use the remaining balance in your Flexible Spending Account to add a second, more “daring” pair of designer eye glasses to your wardrobe.

Contact lenses: Daily wear and extended-wear disposal contact lenses typically have up to a four year shelf-life, provided they are stored in their original, sealed-packages under normal conditions. So if you want to stock up on contact lenses for the coming year, you can use your Flexible Spending Account funds to buy ahead for 2012. Even better, buying a year’s supply of contacts enables you to take advantage of bulk discounts and rebates to stretch your Flex Spending dollars even more. If you’re concerned about your prescription changing during the year, don’t worry: Most manufacturers and optical providers (including Urban Optiques) will let you return your unsealed contact lenses for a new prescription, if it changes.

Colored Contact lenses: Want to make your brown eyes blue? Colored or tinted contact lenses are eligible for Flexible Spending, provided they are prescription lenses and not “no-power” contacts for purely cosmetic purposes.

Special Effects Prescription Contact lenses: If you want to get a pair of prescription, special effects contacts for next Halloween (or just to add a little excitement at the next office party), special effects contact lenses like Crazy Eyes qualify for Flex Spending, provided they match your regular contact lens prescription

Contact Lens Solution and Cleaners: It’s a small individual expense, but over the year, contact lens solution and cleaners can add up. If you have a few dollars left in your Flexible Spending Account, you can stock up on contact lens care products like solution and enzyme cleaners for the coming year.

Computer glasses: Suffering from eye strain, headaches or blurry vision after a long day at the computer? Computer glasses might help. And, they qualify for Flex spending. Many people who don’t normally need eyeglasses find that a good pair of computer glasses can help them focus better after extended stints on the computer, as well as reduce eye fatigue. And computer glasses don’t have to be ugly — we can pair them up with any fashion or designer frame that you like.

Prescription Safety glasses: While regular safety glasses don’t qualify for Flexible Spending, if you require a prescription in your safety glasses, you can use your Flexible Spending benefit to help cover the cost

Eye Exams: You can also use your Flexible Spending Account dollars to offset deductibles and co-pays for eye exams. So if you haven’t had an exam in the past year and you have some Flex funds you are about to lose, get your peepers checked in December and be sure to get your receipts in before the end of the calendar year.

While prescription eyewear and vision care products can help you make sure you spend all of your Flexible Spending Account dollars without turning any unused balance over to Uncle Sam come January 1st, there are plenty of other non-vision ways to use your Flex Spending Account dollars.

philadelphia, vision source, greater philadelphia, new jersey

MAKE EYE EXAMS PART OF THE BACK TO SCHOOL ROUTINE

noreply@blogger.com (Your Vision Source Doctor) — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 22:48:00 +0000

Majority of children start school without ever having an eye examination.

Children across the country are gearing up for a new school year. Before heading back to the classroom, your Vision Source doctor recommends a visit to the optometrist. Healthy vision is an important part to the learning process and success in school. Reading, writing and computer work are among the visual skills that students are required to perform daily. However, studies show that most parents are not including eye exams as part of their child’s back-to-school health check-up.
It is important to keep in mind, a school vision screening, while helpful, is not a substitute for a comprehensive eye examination. Screenings vary in scope and are not designed to detect many visual problems that can significantly impact tasks like reading where more than clarity of vision is needed. Comprehensive eye exams performed by optometrists are essential for clear, comfortable and healthy vision. States including Kentucky, Missouri and Illinois have successfully established programs requiring mandatory eye exams for school-age children.

"In kindergarten we enter school for the first time with tears in our eyes and as seniors we leave the same way." Unknown source.

Children's Emergency Room Visits for Contact Lens Problems

noreply@blogger.com (Your Vision Source Doctor) — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 21:04:00 +0000

The journal Pediatics, in association with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), looked at emergency room visits for children. Many were associated with contact lens wear. These events included abrasions and ulcers of the cornea and conjunctivitis (I.E., "pink eye"). While these did not require hospitalization, many could have been prevented.

The most common risk factors for contact lens complications were not following the prescribed wearing, care and replacement schedules. It is well known that improper care, using solutions other than those prescribed, not replacing cases or lenses as prescribed, poor hygiene, buying lenses on the Internet without a valid prescriptions, and not seeing the eye doctor regularly, all lead to increased risk of complications.

When eye symptoms occur in children who wear contact lenses, it is important for parents to promptly contact their child's eye doctor to ensure proper diagnosis and management of any potential contact lens-related complication.
Contact lens wear among children has benefits, including improved self-perception and unobstructed peripheral vision. By maintaining regular appointments with the eye doctor and reviewing lens replacement, lens care and hygiene at every visit, both children and adults can be happy, healthy, safe contact lens wearers.

"There are no seven wonders of the world in the eyes of a child. There are seven million." quoted from W. Streightiff

Eye Safety of Those Around You

noreply@blogger.com (Your Vision Source Doctor) — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 20:18:00 +0000

We recently took care of a patient on an emergency basis for debris that was embedded on the surface of his eye. The accident happened when his neighbor was weed wacking in an adjoining yard. Unfortunately, a relaxing break on the front porch landed him in our office to remove the debris.

It got me thinking! We always advise our patients to protect themselves with safety eyewear, but what about the other nearby people?. So this month’s message is to remember to keep in mind nearby neighbors, children playing and pets that may inadvertently get in harms way while you are gardening.

"It is a golden maxim to cultivate the garden for the nose, and the eyes will take care of themselves" by Robert Louis Stevenson

noreply@blogger.com (Your Vision Source Doctor) — Thu, 26 May 2011 12:53:00 +0000

SET YOUR SIGHTS ON SPRING EYE ALLERGY RELIEF
Common medications and remedies don't cut it; doctors of optometry offer tips for alleviating seasonal eye allergies. ).
With the record-breaking cold and snow the country experienced this winter, spring will be a much welcomed relief. But, for many Americans who suffer from allergies, warmer weather brings the onset of sneezing, coughing and itchy, watery eyes.
Eye-Q® respondents (a recent national survey) indicated that eye allergies can be a nuisance and interfere with participating in recreational outdoor activities (32 percent); sleep (29 percent) and the ability to think or concentrate (28 percent). Fortunately, eye allergies can be curtailed and sometimes even prevented by following these recommendations from the AOA:

Don't touch or rub your eyes.
Wash hands often with soap and water.
Wash bed linens and pillowcases in hot water and detergent to reduce allergens.
Avoid wearing eye makeup.
Don’t overwear your contact lenses. Consider reducing daily wear times.

When these simple steps don’t help, it’s time to see your Vision Source doctor to discuss treatment options for allergy relief. There are eye drops that can provide almost immediate and longlasting relief, and often just need to be taken once a day!

How to make checking in at your doctor's office EASY!

noreply@blogger.com (Your Vision Source Doctor) — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 13:33:00 +0000

Knowing your insurance coverage and how your benefits work will make checking in with the front desk easier on you and your wallet. Look into your vision and medical benefits before you arrive for your appointment by visiting your insurance WEBSITE online or call the member services number on the back of your cards FOR A DESCRIPTION OF YOUR BENEFITS. If you are unsure of your coverage you can always call your Human Resource department at your place of employment.

Bring both your medical and vision benefit cards or information with you to the appointment. When you provide us with the correct information we can verify coverage and sometimes, even the exact dollar amount towards glasses or contact lenses.

Know your copay and be prepared to pay it at the time of your visit. Knowing your coverage helps us help you maximize the coverage you can receive!

WHY RUB?!

noreply@blogger.com (Your Vision Source Doctor) — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 15:39:00 +0000

Many of our patients use multipurpose contact lens solutions to care for their lenses. They are convenient and usually less expensive than buying a multi-bottle system. They are advertised often as “NO RUB” solutions making it very appealing to the consumer. The problem is they just don’t clean as well when used as directed. Most directions suggest something like a 20 second rinse on both sides of your contacts.
Let’s go to the kitchen for an analogy. If you bake a casserole and just put the dirty pan in the dishwasher, it will come out 90-95% clean with either a film or clumps of dried food in places. If you reuse that dish it will continue to build food deposits in those places and more. If you wash it by hand, it’s completely clean.
When you think about it, it’s pretty obvious that rubbing your contact lenses will result in a cleaner surface. Cleaner contacts mean they feel better and you reduce your risk of getting infections. So, go ahead and buy that multi-purpose “No Rub” solution because it is easier than using a separate daily cleaner, BUT MAKE SURE YOU RUB! And do it every day!! Or better yet, wear daily disposable contacts lenses! Not only are they healthier for you, but you don’t have to worry about rubbing, buying solutions, or cases or how old your lenses are. And they are LESS expensive when you factor all of the costs associated with contacts!

Caring For Your New Eyeglasses

noreply@blogger.com (Your Vision Source Doctor) — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 22:35:00 +0000

Caring For Your New Eyeglasses

Those new glasses look great on you, and you'll want to keep that look fresh and bright. Theses simple steps will ensure your satisfaction.

Have your glasses adjusted if they slip, feel tight or look crooked. If your temples won't stay open, have the screws tighteded. Put on and remove your glasses with both hands to avoid stretching the fit.

If your frame has nosepads, the color should be clear. Have them repladed annually so they won't appear discolored.

During the daily cleaning, use your microfiber drying cloth to buff the frame so it gleams.

When not worn, store your glasses in a hard case. They will become scratched and dull in your pocket or purse. Add a drying cloth to the case to gently dust away snowflakes that appear throughout the day.

Eye-Friendly Toys for a Safe Holiday

noreply@blogger.com (Your Vision Source Doctor) — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 21:51:00 +0000

The holidays are filled with anticipation of gifts and new toys. When making decisions for selecting new toys, parents need to tell Santa and loved ones to pick eye-safe and age appropriate toys for children.

So, in general, what toys should parents avoid? Toys with pointed , sharp or rough edges or pieces. Beware of long handled toys, like mops, brooms, pony sticks and rakes. Check to make sure that they have rounded handles and watch closely children under 2 with such toys.

Avoid slingshots, dart guns and arrows for children under 6. Ideally, these toys should be avoided completely, especially when there are younger children in the house because they have the potential to be harmful.

Great toys for children are those that stimulate visual development, improve hand-eye coordination and demonstrate spatial relationships.

Happy Holidays and Happy Shopping!

National Diabetes Awareness Month

noreply@blogger.com (Your Vision Source Doctor) — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 22:18:00 +0000

November is National Diabetes Awareness month and as part of that we would like to make you aware of the importance of eyecare in Diabetic patients.

As U.S. waistbands expand, so do the numbers of people diagnosed with diabetes. In fact, it is estimated that 21 million Americans have diabetes and one-third don't know they have it. A diagnosis of diabetes can bring with it the possibility of vision loss or total blindness. The American Optometric Association encourages the public to include optometrists in their team of healthcare professionals and to visit their optometrist regularly just as they do their primary care physician and dentist.

Diabetic eye disease is silent in the early stages and if not caught early enough can cause irreversible damage to your retina and cause vision loss. It also increases your risks for other eye diseases such as glaucoma and cataracts. If you or a family member are diabetic, we recommend that you see your optometrist annually for a dilated eye exam to help protect your eyesight.

noreply@blogger.com (Your Vision Source Doctor) — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 18:22:00 +0000

BACK-TO-SCHOOL CHECKLIST SHOULD INCLUDE TRIP TO EYE DOCTOR
Parents and students throughout the country are crossing items off their back-to-school checklists, but most are missing an important task to ensure learning success : a visit to the eye doctor for a comprehensive eye exam!
As classrooms adopt more technologically advanced tools, such as interactive blackboard presentations, the dependence on adequate visual capabilities will increase.
Studies indicate that some children with undetected vision problems can be misdiagnosed with attention deficit disorder (ADD) or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHA). The American Optometric Association (AOA) survey revealed that 64 percent of teachers witnessed a direct improvement in a child’s academic performance and/or classroom behavior after an eye or vision problem was diagnosed and treated! If your child experiences any of the following, an optometrist should be consulted about a possible vision problem:

Loses place while reading
Avoids close work
Tends to rub eyes
Has headaches
Turns or tilts head
Makes frequent reversals when reading or writing
Uses finger to maintain place when reading
Omits or confuses small words when reading
Consistently performs below potential
Struggles to complete homework
Squints while reading or watching television
Has behavioral problems
Holds reading material closer than normal.

Early detection and treatment are key in correcting vision problems and helping children see clearly. The AOA recommends that a child’s first eye examination by an eye doctor take place at 6 months of age. Comprehensive eye exams should be conducted beginning at age 3, before a child enters school, and then every two years, unless otherwise advised by an optometrist. In between exams, parents and teachers should monitor children for the more prevalent signs that a student’s vision may be impaired.

noreply@blogger.com (Your Vision Source Doctor) — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 15:01:00 +0000

OVEREXPOSURE TO UV RAYS CAN LEAD TO EYE DISEASES
Prime vacation season for the beach is here and most of us are only thinking about protecting our skin. We should also be concerned about protecting our eyes because overexposure to UV rays can lead to eye diseases like cataracts and macular degeneration.

The following tips from the American Optometric Association may help prevent eye and vision damage from overexposure to UV radiation

1. Wear protective eyewear any time the eyes are exposed to UV rays, even on cloudy days and during the winter.

2. Sunglasses or protective contact lenses should block 99 to 100 percent of UV-A and UV-B radiation and screen out 75 to 90 percent of visible light.

3. Consider gray-colored lenses to reduce light intensity without altering the color of objects and provide the most natural color vision. Brown or amber-colored lenses increase contrast as well as reduce light intensity.

4. Don’t forget protection for young children and teenagers, who typically spend more time in the sun than adults and are at a greater risk for damage.

So remember, the next time you go to buy that pair of sunglasses, don’t forget to make sure they are healthy and protective for your eyes also.