US OPHTHALMIC REVIEW – VOLUME 7 ISSUE 1 – SPRING 2014

One of our greatest challenges as practicing clinicians is staying abreast of the continually evolving diagnostics, therapeutics, and new technology in ophthalmology. In some respects, this is a nice problem to have because it means that impactful innovation is continuing at a rapid pace in our field. however, I perceive that information overload has spawned […]

Cytokines are not only critical for host defense and immunoregulation, but are also major players in the immunopathogenesis of inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. Janus kinases (JAKs) are critical for the intracellular signaling of a large family of cytokines. Tofacitinib (CP-690,550) is a potent and selective inhibitor of JAKs. Oral tofacitinib has been approved for the […]

“Look… Up in the sky… It’s a bird… It’s a plane… No, it’s supertechnology.” Commonly performed in Europe, South Africa, Canada, and China, corneal collagen cross-linking (CXL) is still off-label in the US. Why? Despite the proven effectiveness and safety of the procedure in many countries around the world, many feel that the lack of […]

Over the last few years, surgical extraction of a refractive lenticule, or ReLEx®, has evolved as a new treatment in the field of keratorefractive surgery. Currently, the VisuMax® femtosecond (FS) laser (Carl Zeiss Meditec, Jena, Germany) is the only platform to offer this treatment. The 500 kHz VisuMax laser generates very fast pulses (10-15 s […]

Cataract is the leading cause of avoidable blindness in the world.1 Manual small incision cataract surgery (MSICS) and phacoemulsification (phaco) are the most popular methods of cataract extraction today. MSICS is significantly faster, less expensive, and less technology-dependent than phaco, and has been extensively practiced in developing countries such as India. It has similar advantages […]

Glaucoma is a set of eye conditions in which the optic nerve head (ONH) and retinal ganglion cells are damaged, resulting in the visual field (VF) of the sufferer being reduced. Part of what makes glaucoma so dangerous is that the rate of VF impairment is typically slow and that it usually begins by affecting […]

Glaucoma is one of the leading causes of blindness worldwide. It was estimated that in 2010, 60.5 million people had glaucoma and this was projected to increase to 79.6 million by 2020.1 Glaucoma is not considered a single disease, but rather a group of diseases associated with three major characteristics: optic neuropathy with excavation of […]

In patients presenting with obvious signs of glaucoma and vision loss, the decision to start glaucoma treatment is relatively straightforward. The benefit of initiating treatment, in terms of preventing further loss of vision and maintaining quality of life (QoL), generally greatly outweighs the negatives of treatment. Choosing to begin therapy in a glaucoma suspect, on […]

Lasers have been used in ophthalmology since within a decade of its invention in 1960. The argon laser was found to be most suitable for the eye as the blue-green wavelengths were better absorbed by hemoglobin and melanin in ocular tissue. The first reported use of lasers for glaucoma was in the 1970s, initially for […]

Diabetes is a metabolic disease resulting from the body’s insufficient production or use of insulin, a peptide hormone responsible for regulating glucose levels in the blood and tissues. Especially when improperly managed, diabetes results in a number of complications over time, affecting nearly every organ system, including the ocular tissue. In addition to increased risk […]

Current Therapy of Retinal Vascular Disease Retinal vascular disorders are commonly found in ophthalmological practice: in addition to hypertensive changes and retinal vein occlusions, diabetic eye disease play a major role. Driven by demographic change and the obesity trend, the prevalence of diabetes has increased steadily over the last years and is likely to rise […]

The global medical, financial, and personal toll of type 1 and 2 diabetes is well documented. In the US, the total cost of diabetes to the US healthcare system was estimated at US$174 billion (€126 billion) in 2007.1 The International Diabetes Federation estimates that diabetes health costs were US$105.5 billion (€82.2 billion) in the European […]