Eye Care Blog

There are a group of hereditary or congenital degenerations affecting the cornea. A few of them manifest themselves at birth, but mainly they occur in childhood and adolescence. Their onset is slow, and they are sometimes difficult to diagnose without special instruments. Ophthalmologists consider them to be metabolic in origin, most probably the result of an abnormality in one of the enzymes servicing the cornea. Read the rest of this entry »

As regards lens-implant surgery the benefits are very great. To be able to have normal sight again without the need for thick spectacles or the bother of wearing contact lenses is surely the preferred treatment. Where contact lenses are used subsequent to a cataract operation, they differ from ordinary contact lenses in certain ways. The condition of an eye that has had its crystalline lens removed is known as aphakia, and aphakia almost invariably demands a contact lens that is much thicker in its centre than the lens worn by the ordinary short-sighted person. Read the rest of this entry »

The nerve layer of the retina is adherent to the pigment layer behind or outside it, and the pigment layer in turn is connected to the choroid blood vessel membrane. When, as may sometimes happen, the nerve layer separates off from the pigment layer the result is retinal detachment. Next to natural senile atrophy of the retinae, detachment is probably the single most common condition affecting the back of the eye. At big eye hospitals whole wards and departments are set aside to deal with this problem. Read the rest of this entry »

At the beginning of this century the most prominent cause of blindness was infections of the eye. The eye is exposed externally to infections because of the very delicate skin-lining of the lids and sensitive outer membrane of the eye itself. Other tissue areas of equal susceptibility to infection are the nose, mouth and genitalia. It is even possible for all these orifices to be infected by the same organism.

Since the the availability of antibiotics has drastically reduced the incidence of chronic consequences following an infection. Many serious infections, provided they are treated quickly, no longer inflict severe damage. Read the rest of this entry »

It is also obvious that the method must have prevented other errors of refraction, a problem which previously had not even been seriously considered, because hypermetropia is supposed to be congenital and until not long ago astigmatism was also supposed to be congenital in the great majority of cases. Anyone who knows how to use a retinoscope, however, can demonstrate in a few minutes that both of these conditions are acquired; for no matter how astigmatic or hypermetropic an eye may be, its vision always becomes normal when it looks at a blank surface without trying to see. Read the rest of this entry »