News

Medical information on the Internet is available 24/7 and knows no geographic limits. Patients can educate themselves while in bed, on the sofa, or while commuting. Such access facilitates saving time, money, and embarrassment for patients in the most rapid way possible. The plus side is that they can empower themselves with additional information, possibly motivating them to make a medical appointment and making them feel more prepared for that intervention, according to Ivan Goldberg, MBBS, FRANZCO.

A U.S. district court has ruled that Pershing Square Capital Management can vote its 9.7% stake in Allergan in a special shareholder meeting on Dec. 18.

Johnson & Johnson Vision Care (JJVC) announced the initial launch of 1-Day Acuvue Define brand contact lenses with Lacreon Technology, a new category of eye enhancement contact lenses that accentuate natural beauty while helping to support a healthy eye.

Richard Zorab, vice president for ophthalmic knowledge at the American Academy of Ophthalmology, has died at the age of 68.

The advent of anti-vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) therapy has been a tremendous advance for the treatment of retinal vein occlusion (RVO), but many other opportunities exist, said Joan W. Miller, MD.

The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has granted billing and reimbursement statuses to products from Omeros Corp. and VisionCare Ophthalmic Technologies, respectively.

A retina specialist explains why vitrectomy surgery is safer and more efficient using a new ultra-high-speed vitrectomy cutting probe combined with 27+ gauge instrumentation.

A diet that contains lutein and zeaxanthin-or supplementation with these two carotenoids-appears to benefit healthy vision throughout life.

Knowing when to use laser therapy or injection therapy-either together or stand-alone-for diabetic macular edema is a crucial decision for the ophthalmologist.

Selective genotyping allows clinicians to implement individualized surveillance programs that may increase the detection of progression and decrease the burden of unnecessary frequent examinations.

Outcomes from a study of intravitreal aflibercept were evaluated for patients with and without prior anti-vascular endothelial growth factor therapy for diabetic macular edema.

James M. Osher, MD, identifies the patient characteristics and reviews some of the complications with small-gauge vitrectomy for vitreous floaters.

The Steroids for Corneal Ulcers Trial allays some fears about using a topical corticosteroid as an adjunct to antibiotic treatment in eyes with a bacterial corneal ulcer.

Large or small pigment epithelial detachments (PED) in neovascular age-related macular degeneration (AMD) can be managed effectively with ranibizumab PRN therapy with regular monitoring, said Rahul N. Khurana, MD.

The play "Our Town" may be three-quarters of a century old, but my feeling is that there is a message here for today’s ophthalmologists. I sometimes think there is a risk that we physicians can get caught up in the minutiae of medical practice-transitioning to electronic medical records, fighting for pre-authorizations to get our patients the treatments they need, dealing with the Byzantine system of medical billing, etc.

Currently, there is an ophthalmologist-only eye care delivery model, as well as an MD/OD cooperation model. Now what is gaining more attention is what is referred to as an integrated eye-care delivery type model.

Planning for the fifth year of “Cataract Surgery: Telling It Like It Is,” set for Thursday, Jan. 15, to Sunday, Jan. 18, is well under way and meeting organizer Robert H. Osher, MD, promises “more faculty, more topics, and a lot more fireworks” for this latest gathering here.

In the DISCOVER Study, ophthalmologists are exploring real-time, intraoperative optical coherence tomography utilizing a microscope-integrated prototype with a heads-up display surgeon feedback system.

Advances in imaging technology using swept-source microscope-integrated optical coherence tomography (OCT) provides detailed and three-dimensional volume images in real time, which cannot be obtained with conventional spectral-domain intraoperative OCT systems.

Analyses of data from patients treated for vitreomacular adhesion at a single center provide insights for management decisions and patient counseling.

Outcomes remain positive after 12 to 36 months of follow-up in a series of 12 patients blind from retinitis pigmentosa who received a retinal prosthesis system.

Glaucoma researchers developing machine-learning techniques to identify patterns of glaucoma-related visual field loss, without human supervision, and to detect progression of glaucoma based on these patterns are reporting their experience in applying their methods to binocular visual fields.

Corneal epithelial thickness has been found to remodel and change significantly after femto-LASIK, according to the findings of a prospective study conducted under the direction of A. John Kanellopoulos, MD, and colleagues.

Bausch + Lomb presented several product innovations in pharmaceuticals, OTC offerings, IOLs, and surgical devices and equipment during the annual meeting of the American Academy of Ophthalmology.

David E.I. Pyott, Allergan’s board chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) has been ranked the 4th best-performing CEO in the world by the Harvard Business Review.

The results of the largest retrospective study of multiple sclerosis (MS) in uveitis patients has revealed that nearly 60% of patients with both diseases were diagnosed with each within a 5-year span.

Ophthalmology Times is pleased to announce the winner of the 2014 Resident Writers Award Program, sponsored by Allergan.

A joint reception hosted by Ophthalmic Women Leaders (OWL) and Women in Ophthalmology (WIO) featured the presentation of the Suzanne Veronneau-Troutman Award to an outstanding female ophthalmologist. In addition, a panel discussion focused on the importance of working together across diverse professional disciplines in the eye-care field.

When misalignment of a toric IOL underlies a suboptimal outcome and the problem is identified during early postoperative follow-up, surgeons should not procrastinate about taking the patient back to the operating room for a repositioning procedure, said Roger F. Steinert, MD.

Data reported by American surgeons using ocriplasmin for treatment of symptomatic vitreomacular adhesion (VMA) show that it is possible to increase the success rate through careful patient selection, said David Chow, MD.