VisionHealth EyeCare

Percentage-wise, I don’t have a lot of patients wearing GP lenses, but for those of you that do, please be careful how you handle them.  Josh, from Valley Contax, a lab that make GP lenses, says this:

It is amazing to us as we look at lenses in our high powered microscopes what we see. A common culprit is what we call the “Formica slide”. This can be a destroyer of lenses on both the front surface, and the edge. Patients need to be aware the dangers of this. It can lead to not only scratches, which thus leads to a degradation of optics and wettability. These scratches can also be the foothold to protein buildup, which dramatically reduces the all important oxygen permeability that makes our product very successful. The most frightening aspect of the countertop menace is the potential damage to the edges. It there is a chip or a crack in the edge, the cornea can easily be scratched, and epithelium can be irritated. If there is ever a crack in the edge, the true danger is the lens breaking in the eye.

If your lens happens to fall down, usually a moist finger is enough to suction the lens off the surface. If it fell edge-down and curve-up so that it won’t easily suction on your finger tip, instead of sliding it across the counter or sink, it would be best to have one of those suction-cup thingies to pick it straight up. I prefer the DMV Ultra.

The state of Utah rebid the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), so effective July 1, 2010 I will no longer be able to accept any form of CHIP. Utah chose the insurance companies of SelectHealth and Molina to administrate CHIP in Utah for the next five years, and I am not a contract provider with either of them.

By the way, I would be a contract provider with SelectHealth, but from Provo to Cache Valley they discriminate against optometrists and only allow ophthalmologists on their panel. I would suggest writing your Utah state senators and representatives and ask them to not allow the Utah state government to contract with insurance companies that do not allow any willing provider to be paneled.

“What drop can I buy so this redness in my eye goes away?”

This is a question that we get sometimes from people that happen to pass by the optical. The truth is, there is no way of knowing unless we do an actual paid exam. Why? Because red eyes can be caused from all sorts of different conditions. Not even your personal physician can really know without performing additional testing like flourescien drops and highly magnified ophthalmoscopic evaluation using a slit lamp. Such testing equipment isn’t commonly found in your regular doctor’s office, so whenever you or your child have a red and/or painful eye and/or decreased vision, come see me, your eye doctor.

Cases in point:

• Case #1:
  
  A distinguished gentlemen came in, miserable, because both eyes were painful, light sensitive, red, and very watery. His regular doctor told him that his eyes have a cold and to just wait it out. I saw him, evaluated his eyes with my equipment, and again concluded that his eyes did have a virus-caused condition, but rather than do nothing, he should try a prescription eye drop that will greatly enhance his comfort and decrease his redness.
  Diagnosis: epidemic keratoconjunctivitis
  Treatment is with a combination antibiotic and steroid eye drop. It doesn’t kill the viris causing the pink eye, but it helps your eyes be more comfortable and less watery and red. Patient tried it and was ecstatic.
• Case #2:
  
  This patient had a painful, light sensitive, watery, red eye. She is a contact lens wearer. On close examination with a slit lamp, I saw two cloudy circles on the cornea (which is supposed to be crystal clear). Using fluorescien dye and a blue light, the circles lit up green.
  Diagnosis: marginal corneal infiltrates.
  If your pediatrician gave your kid just an antibiotic drop, it wouldn’t help with this condition. It also requires a steroid eye drop.
• Case #3:
  
  Patient came in with painful, light sensitive, watery, red eye. Sound familiar? This time the cornea is clear (or there could have been white spots on the inside of the cornea), but the anterior chamber of the eye, viewable only under high magnification in a slit lamp, reveals small cells floating around.
  Diagnosis: iritis
  If your pediatrician treated this like a pink eye or even like a marginal corneal infiltrate, your poor child will unnecessarily suffer for a few days until you finally make it in to see me, your eye doctor. This condition requires a powerful steroid to calm the eye down. When these are recurrent, you need blood testing and possibly x-rays to determine the cause.
• Case #4:
  
  Patient came in with a painful, light sensitive, watery, red eye. Your pediatrician got burned the last two times, so let’s say they tried a steroid on this one. Ooops, it made it worse! When we look closer, the cornea has a characteristic pattern of grey/white lines with bulbs called dendrites. Your kid possibly has a history of cold soars and now she/he has one on the eye!
  Diagnosis: herpes simplex keratitis
  Anitibiotics are totally ineffective. Steroids make this condition MUCH worse. A frequently-installed and very expensive eye drop is the only way to treat this condition and minimize a permanent decrease in best possible vision.

Again, all these scenarios really require the expertise and equipment of me, your eye doctor, to help you quickly get relief and effectively handle your eye condition. And these are only a handful of possible problems your eye can have when it’s red. If your eye condition isn’t diagnosed promptly and treated effectively, you will be uncomfortable at best or have permanent vision loss in a worst case scenario.

I don’t have a beef with your primary care eye doctor or your pediatrician. They are great! But don’t put them in the position of having to deal with your red eye since most of them won’t have the equipment necessary nor the day-after-day experience to fully take care of your family’s eye conditions.

Also, you can see why you can’t just come up to me in in the optical and ask about what eye drop could help your redness because it totally depends on what is causing your redness! Your eyes are worth a paid exam.

Myopia control has recently been in the news, and now even ophthalmology studies confirm that bifocals can slow down myopia progression. Eye Doc News reports that:

A good study in Archives demonstrates that executive bifocals (+1.50) do retard myopia in fast-progressing myopes among children. After 2 years, axial length was .62 and myopia about -.50 more in the single vision compared to bifocal group- statistically significant, and if true over several years, very important to public health.

So set up an appointment to see if your child could benefit from bifocals to slow his/her nearsighted progression.

I hope you all had a very happy new year. As I mentioned before, this year my fees had to rise since my costs are going up. I now have to bill more insurances, which requires more time and money.

To offset your increased cost, I’ve changed one fee policy. From now on when dilation is needed as part of your eye exam, there is no extra charge for it.

Please review my new fees and keep updated on the new insurances that I can bill at the “Fee” page.

Myopia (nearsightedness) has been in the news lately thanks to a new study showing that it has increased in our society from 1971 compared to 2004.

Another doctor wrote an excellent piece about what this could mean for you or your kids, so instead of me writing something similar, just click to read what Dr. Nathan Bonilla-Warford wrote.

By the way, I have experience with all the treatments he outlines, including Ortho-K.

With all the hope and change in our economy lately, I’ve actually seen an increase in eye infections. Apparently, when money is short, people wear their contact lenses longer than they are supposed to. Typically, a contact lens is either manufactured to be a 2 week or a 4 week disposable lens. Please follow the recommended replacement schedule for your lens, otherwise, you will be at much more risk of getting something like this:

The left picture is just normal light. You can see two small, white-ish circles at about 6 and 8 O’clock. The right picture is after I put in a temporary yellow die to see it a little better using a blue light. The eye infection/inflammation lights up green.

This condition usually presents when a contact lens wearers stretches their lenses too long and/or has been sleeping in a lens not designed for overnight wear. The eye is typically red, painful, light sensitive, and teary.

When this happens, you’ll need a medical eye visit (from $45-65) and medicated eye drops (from $4-95).

So, if you think you are going to save money on a $34 box of contacts by stretching their useful life, think again.

Also, this is mild compared to a central corneal infection that one could get. Those leave permanent scars in your line of sight, which means permanent vision loss.

Your North Logan Walmart Vision Center has already started their Back-to-School specials. Kids lenses start at just $29. A well worth it upgrade to anti-reflective (no-glare) lenses is just $48. Select frames start at just $9, and don’t forget they have a huge selection that your student son or daughter is sure to like.

They are also sponsoring a coloring contest and the winner will be awarded a Sponge Bob back pack.

Select one of these pictures for your child to color (Lost or Cowboy) and drop it off at the North Logan Walmart Vision Center.

While you are there, schedule an eye exam while they are still just $45*.

*For basic eye exam. See my full list of exam upgrades and fee schedule.