Research & Publications

Depression Vision Loss 0 Comments

The Effects of Vision Loss on Mental Health and Quality of Life

Imagine you’ve just been told by your eye doctor that you are going to lose your vision to an irreversible and incurable disease – what do you feel? Panic, stress, anxiety, feelings of being overwhelmed, powerlessness, hopelessness, fear? Probably all the above to some degree or another. These feelings may often persist for many patients diagnosed with a progressive sight-threatening condition, beyond the initial breaking of the bad news. You don’t have to stretch your imagination much further to figure that living with a visual impairment can take a toll on an individual’s mental health.
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Laser Eye Surgery 0 Comments

The History of Laser Eye Surgery

The process that we know as “vision” involves multiple, complex functions and numerous anatomical structures along the visual pathway. A disruption to any of these functions – from the movement of the eye muscles to the focusing of light into the eyeball to the transmission of the visual signal through the brain to interpretation of this signal – can result in various problems, including headaches, double vision, failure to process the visual signals meaningfully, loss of areas of the visual field, and of course, blurry vision.

For the majority of humans, blurry vision arises from problems at a specific step in the visual pathway – the refraction and focusing of light through the eyeball. This leads to what we call “refractive error.”
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Cataracts 0 Comments

Part III: Phacoemulsification (PCS) vs. Femtosecond Laser-Assisted Cataract Surgery (FLACS)

The success rate of cataract surgery in the developed world is typically quoted as 98% or higher. However, as with any procedure performed on the complex human body, things can go wrong. Approximately 0.5% of patients undergoing cataract surgery experience a severe complication with significant visual impact; in the USA with around 2-3 million surgeries performed every year, this represents up to 15 000 patients with vision loss following what should be a sight-restoring procedure. Although a 98% success rate is pretty good, it’s important not to go into cataract surgery “blind” to the potential complications.
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Cataracts 0 Comments

Part II: Phacoemulsification (PCS) vs. Femtosecond Laser-Assisted Cataract Surgery (FLACS)

So, you’ve decided that it’s time to have your cataracts removed. This became clear after you mistook Joan’s roaming pet rabbit for the bowl during your weekly casual game of lawn bowls; unfortunately, due to your cataracts this is currently the only thing that is clear. A brief foray into the world wide web using the search term “cataract surgery” quickly makes evident that while the surgical procedure itself is exceedingly common and relatively straightforward, there are a few decisions to be made – for example, whether you go with FLACS or phaco, and which IOL option is best for you, whatever these words mean!
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Cataracts 0 Comments

Part I: Phacoemulsification (PCS) vs. Femtosecond Laser-Assisted Cataract Surgery (FLACS)

Putting a knife to the eye sounds pretty horrific, like some sort of method of “enhanced interrogation.” In fact, the eyeball is such a sensitive, squeamish part of the body that there are even websites listing horror movies with the worst eyeball-involving scenes (Google it!). Ommetaphobia aside, a scalpel in the right hands can provide sight-restoring, quality-of-life-redeeming treatment to an eye affected by cataract.
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Eye Floaters 0 Comments

What You Need to Know About Eye Floaters

Cobwebs, specks, worms, squiggles, flies, “I thought I saw a rat run across the kitchen floor but when I looked it wasn’t there” – eye floaters can take on all sorts of shapes and (evidently zoomorphic) forms. They can vary from an elusive drifting spot noticeable only against a clear, blue sky to an irritating blob in the center of your vision, determined to block out the next word of every sentence you try to read.
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Contact Lenses 0 Comments

Top Tips for Contact Lens Wearers

Contact lenses are a great alternative to glasses for many reasons. They don’t fog while cooking, don’t get covered in raindrops in wet weather, don’t fall off your face during aerial yoga, and don’t diminish the intensity of your smolder as you lock eyes with your love interest across the room. But as with many things, these benefits come with some additional responsibility.

 

Contact lens handling

Handwashing is a big deal. Bacteria or dirt and impurities from your hands can transfer onto the contact lens during either insertion or removal, making it important to thoroughly wash and dry your hands before handling the lens. Any bacteria caught on the lens surface, which is subsequently placed on the delicate cornea of the eye, then has several hours to burrow its way through the cornea’s defenses and spark an infection. Using a soap free of moisturizers is ideal as these soaps often leave residual chemicals on the hands. Hand sanitizer is not a good idea as these usually contain alcohol and the eye is not a fan of alcohol.
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Eye Health 0 Comments

How to Be the Best Patient Ever for Your Eye Doctor

Everyone wants to be the best at something, right? And while we can’t all be the next Usain Bolt or Albert Einstein, with dedication and intense training, there is one thing you could possibly become the best at – being a great eye care patient. Not only will being a switched-on, savvy patient help the examination run smoothly for your eye care practitioner, it can also benefit you and let you get the most out of your consultation. Remember that your eye doctor is there to not only address the concerns you bring up but also to detect and manage any problems you might not even know you had. This encompasses both issues with your vision and your ocular health. Here are some things to think about.
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Refractive Error 0 Comments

What Is Refractive Error?

Vision is a pretty amazing thing – except for when it isn’t. Over 75 per cent of Americans are estimated to wear optical correction in the form of spectacles or contact lenses. And it’s thought that even more should be wearing some form of optical correction but instead wear some form of denial to address refractive error.

Refractive error occurs when the eye cannot properly focus which, of course, results in blurred vision. The 4 most common types of refractive error are myopia, presbyopia, hyperopia, and astigmatism.
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Colorblindness 0 Comments

Color Perception, Photoreceptors and the Different Types of Colorblindness

Contrary to what the name suggests, colorblindness isn’t an absolute blindness to color. The perception of color is a complex process involving the eyes and the brain, and even two people who consider themselves “color vision normal” may disagree on certain hues – is that sunset more pink or purple? In a person with a diagnosed color vision deficiency (a more accurate term), they usually will experience what is considered a “shortened spectrum”, meaning they are able to distinguish fewer colors compared to a color-normal person and may confuse a few different shades as the same color. In Caucasian populations, the overall prevalence of colorblindness is typically quoted as 8% in males and 0.5% in females. A study conducted in Californian preschool boys found the lowest rate of colorblindness in African American at 1.4% and the second lowest in Hispanic boys at 2.6%.

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Research & Publications

The Link Between Pterygia and Melanoma

  Who doesn’t love the sun and surf? The answer is probably nobody. And who loves surfer’s eye? The answer is also …

Pterygium Removal Surgery Results Using the Femtosecond Laser

Pterygia (singular pterygium) are triangular, wing-shaped overgrowths of fibrovascular tissue on the front surface of the …

Blood Tests May Be Able to Detect Eye Cancer

Is that a freckle or eye cancer? Good question. Here’s another question – did you know that you can get both freckles …