Most patients have tried artificial tears. Many find that they help — for an hour or two. The fact that drops alone often don't solve dry eye is not a failure of the patient; it's a clue that something more specific is happening on the ocular surface that needs more specific intervention. Dry eye is a diagnostic category, not a single condition. The most successful treatment plans match the type of dry eye to the right intervention. The ladder of…
The eye is a photosensitive organ. It responds to light continuously, and over decades of cumulative UV exposure, that response includes damage. Three of the most common adult eye conditions — cataracts, macular degeneration, and pterygium — are accelerated by ultraviolet radiation. The good news: protection is straightforward and meaningful. What UV does to the eye Two bands of ultraviolet light reach the surface of the earth — UVA and UVB. Both are absorbed by structures of the eye. UVB…
Visual field testing — the formal mapping of what each eye can see across its full range — is one of the most useful diagnostic tools in ophthalmology, and especially in low vision evaluation. For patients with macular degeneration, glaucoma, stroke, or other conditions affecting parts of the visual field, perimetry quantifies what's gone, what remains, and how to make the most of remaining vision. What a visual field test actually measures The eye has a wide field of view…
Dementia and the eye are connected in ways most patients and many physicians do not recognize. The eye itself frequently looks normal in dementia. The problem is downstream — in the visual processing centers of the brain, in the white matter tracts that coordinate vision, in the systems that direct attention and gaze. Standard eye exams may report normal acuity even when a patient is functionally unable to read or recognize faces. This is the territory of neuro-ophthalmology — and…