News

Nominations sought

Nominations are now being accepted for the second annual Transitions Vision Benefits Broker of the Year award, which will recognize professionals who are encouraging healthy sight through vision care benefit offerings and education.

OLA announces finalists

Members of the Optical Laboratories Association (OLA) will be able to vote for 2011 Awards of Excellence contenders beginning next month.

Interesting new findings have emerged from a study of the risk factors for the development and progression of diabetic retinopathy, namely, that its severity determines the rate of progression, especially in younger patients.

One of the key themes for this year's meeting of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology was nano technology and regenerative medicine.

The key to the best visual results after cataract and refractive surgery rests with optimizing the ocular surface in patients with dry eye disorders prior to the procedure.

When performing LASIK in eyes with hyperopia with a large positive angle kappa, centering the ablation on the corneal vertex rather than the pupil centroid provides superior results.

Many children, returning to school this fall, will lack the tools that can help them perform at their optimal level: a professional eye exam and glasses, if necessary.

An intrastromal procedure performed using a femtosecond laser fulfills many of the criteria for an ideal presbyopic treatment.

Stem cell-based therapy is an important potential treatment to restore vision in patients with a wide range of retina disease.

An eye for investing

Robert Freedland, MD, who works at Mayo Clinic Health System in La Crosse, Wis., is a stock market investor for the past 43 years.

Sensory substitution devices are in development as vision restoration technology for the blind, but a lack of accepted standards for screening users and evaluating their performance represents an important impediment to the ultimate of clinical success of these platforms.

Quantitative in vivo assessment of retinal blood flow attained with ultra-high-speed swept source/Fourier-domain optical coherence tomography could be beneficial for assessing pathologic changes in ocular diseases associated with abnormalities in retinal blood flow.

The Henry Ford OptimEyes Super Vision Center has opened in the new Henry Ford Medical Center. The 140,000-square-foot facility includes 65,000 square feet of space for the Henry Ford OptimEyes Super Vision Center, with the remaining space expected to be leased out to private-practice physicians.

Initial top-line results from a Phase III study of bromfenac ophthalmic solution (Remura, ISTA Pharmaceuticals) indicate that bromfenac was not statistically superior to placebo in treating one sign and one symptom of dry eye disease. ISTA announced this result from the WEST study, the first of two phase III safety and efficacy studies being conducted under a special protocol assessment (SPA) agreed upon with the FDA.

B + L expands recall

Bausch + Lomb (B + L) has expanded its voluntary recall of methylcellulose lubricant ophthalmic solution, USP 1% (Murocel) to six lots. Following this voluntary product recall, B + L will discontinue the product entirely.

Dr. Chu honored

Y. Ralph Chu, MD, has been named one of the top 10 business owners in the Twin Cities in the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal Diversity in Business Awards program.

MoralEyes, a wholesaler and retailer of reading glasses and sunglasses, is launching a used-glasses recycling program Aug. 13 and 14 in New York City.

Technology and eyes

In an effort to assess and address the vision-related effects of the increased use of technology in learning environments, the American Optometric Association (AOA) has conducted a survey and released a report.

JDRF bestows grant

A $495,000 grant from the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) will help researchers at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center further research an eye drop that one day could be used to prevent diabetic retinopathy (DR).

Given the global launch of a corneal inlay (Kamra) for the treatment of presbyopia and an investment by medical technology company Medtronic, AcuFocus says it has experienced significant procedural growth since 2010.