Fort Lauderdale, Florida Ophthalmologist & Eye Surgeon
It’s important to be pro-active in looking after your eyes, and it’s especially important for the elderly to do so.
I write about this at the AARP website where I outline 6 steps to save your sight.
As people age, aches and pains set in and the eyes are part of it. So instead of it getting to the point where you have to deal with a serious eye illness, be proactive and nip it in the bud.
As I continue to spread awareness on glaucoma, I now want to talk more about angle closure glaucoma.
It results in blocking the part of the eye that allows fluid to leave the eye and thus there is an increase in intraocular pressure (IOP).
How does this happen? Typically the angle is situated between the peripheral iris and cornea. Here the trabecular meshwork, which normally will filter out the fluid is located. When the iris is up against the meshwork, the fluid can’t escape.
If not detected quickly, the pressure will build up and can result is significant symptoms such as nerve damage and vision loss.
So if you have a family history of glaucoma or are over 50 years, you should definitely be having an annual eye exam.
Having something stuck in your eye is very serious. Not only do you want to remove the foreign body from the cornea, but you want to do so without causing any additional damage to the cornea or other parts of the eye.
Watching the video will give you some insight into how we take care of this.
If you have any questions please ask!
When to go to the dentist for a checkup it’s common for s/he to take an x-ray of your teeth. They will then use these x-rays to assess the health of your teeth.
An ophthalmologist can not take an x-ray of the optic nerve so instead we take an optic nerve photo.
The great thing about the photos is that they are stored digitally so they can easily be brought up to compare.
Should the patient ever move and thus have a new ophthalmologist we can easily forward them onto their new doctor.
We use the photo to assess the health of the optic nerve. Should there be a glaucoma or anything else that is impacting the optic nerve, we will be able to see that.
As an ophthalmologist, I have many tools at my disposal to gauge the health of my patients’ eyes not just pre-surgery but post-surgery.
Once such tool is Ocular Coherence Tomography which we refer to as OCT.
The tool is used to examine the retina and the eye’s anterior segment. It is great for assessing macular degeneration, glaucoma and diabetic eye disease.
First introduced in 1991, we are so fortunate to live in an age like today where sophisticated technology like this can be harnessed. I use this tool everyday to get a thorough appreciation and understanding of the patient’s eye.