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5 posts from January 2011

January 20, 2011

Make a Difference and Save: Go Red and Get LASIK!

http://www.goredforwomen.org/wearredday/resources/images/336x280Banner1Fund.jpg

 

Thru the end of February, EyeCare 20/20 has teamed up with the American Heart Association and Go Red For Women on a mission to fight heart disease in women. Donate $50.00 to the EyeCare 20/20's Go Red fundraising page, we'll match it and you'll receive $500.00 off a bi-lateral LASIK surgery.
 
Go Red For Women has raised more than $200 million to benefit women's cardiovascular health. The American Heart Association uses revenue collected to support awareness, research, education and community programs to benefit women and to motivate them to reduce their risks.

Isn't it time you joined the thousands of people who have fallen in love with LASIK?  People from all facets of life who now share a common thread: Good Vision.

 

 

January 13, 2011

Warm Coats Warm Hearts Drive a Huge Success!

EyeCare 20/20's annual Warm Coats Warm Hearts Drive was a huge success.  This year, in exchange for bringing a coat into our office, patients received $500 off their LASIK procedure.  Over 50 coats were collected!

Today we dropped the coats off at our local Burlington Coat Factory.  Hopefully, these coats will find their way to those in need to help keep them warm this winter.

Thank you to everyone who made this year's coat drive possible.  Stay tuned to our next charitable endeavor...

2011-Coats1 My wife, Melissa, and I dropping the coats off at the Burlington Coat Factory.


January 12, 2011

ICLs Surpass 200,000 World Wide Implants

STAAR Surgical has announced that more than 200,000 of its implantable contact lenses (Visian Implantable Collamer Lens) have been implanted in patients worldwide.

Since 1994, these lenses have been used in refractive surgery as an alternative to LASIK.  I have been using the ICL for the past 4 years, since their introduction to the US, to effectively treat my myopic patients who either have a degree of myopia too high to be treated with LASIK, or who would not do well with corneal refractive surgery. 

Since it was introduced in 2006, the Visian ICL has been improving the vision of the bravest people in our nation under the harshest of conditions imaginable. In fact, to date surgeons in the US military have implanted over 3,000 ICLs with results that are nothing less of heroic. In a retrospective analysis of outcomes in 139 consecutive eyes of US military personnel implanted with the Visian ICL:

  • 100% of patients believe the Visian ICL enables them to function and perform better
  • More than 80% patients achieve UVCA on 20/15 or better
  • 86% achieve UCVA the same or better than per-op BCVA

The bottom line? If the Visian ICL can meet the needs of US soldiers on the battlefield, one can be confident it will deliver excellent vision for demanding younger patients with active, fast-paced lifestyles – every day.

 

January 07, 2011

Something to Cry About: Scent of Women's Tears Decreases Male Labido


Tears are necessary for maintaining the health of the front surface of the eye and for providing clear vision.  Dry eye is a condition in which there are not enough tears to lubricate and nourish the eye. Patients with dry eyes either do not produce enough tears or have a poor quality of tears. Dry eye is a common and often chronic problem, particularly in older adults.  Very little has been said about crying and tears, until now...

There is an interesting article in this month's Science titled: Human Tears Contain a Chemosignal.  According to the researchers out of Israel:

Emotional tearing is a poorly understood behavior that is considered uniquely human. In mice, tears serve as a chemosignal. We therefore hypothesized that human tears may similarly serve a chemosignaling function. We found that merely sniffing negative-emotion–related odorless tears obtained from women donors, induced reductions in sexual appeal attributed by men to pictures of women’s faces. Moreover, after sniffing such tears, men experienced reduced self-rated sexual arousal, reduced physiological measures of arousal, and reduced levels of testosterone. Finally, functional magnetic resonance imaging revealed that sniffing women's tears selectively reduced activity in brain-substrates of sexual arousal in men.

NPR also ran an interesting segment today on the article, titled Smell the Sadness.  You can listen to the segment below: 

20110107_me_19 1

As a side note, researchers found that between birth and the age of 78 a woman will cry for more than 12,000 hours.  That's 1.36 years!!  Better buy some shares of Viagara maker's Pfiezer at that rate...



January 03, 2011

Will Nintendo 3DS Stunt Your Kids Eyes?

Warning: Nintendo 3DS could eff up your kids' eyes photo

First the answer... No!!  Here is another sign of the times to cover ourselves in a litigenous society...

According to CNN:

Nintendo is warning young children against playing 3-D video games on its upcoming handheld gaming system, the Nintendo 3DS. Kids age 6 and younger who play the 3-D games may have the growth of their eyes stunted..

The warning notes that parents can turn off the 3-D functionality of the handheld 3DS. They can also set passwords that keep kids from using that feature.

The statement also asks everyone who plays the 3-D gaming system to take periodic breaks from the games as often as every hour or 30 minutes.

The warning follows many others on the potential health effects of three-dimensional entertainment. TV makers have issued warnings about young people, pregnant women and even drunk people viewing 3-D TV, noting that the medium may cause nausea, dizziness, and seizures.

I spoke today with EyeCare 20/20's pediatric ophthalmologist, Dr Lauren Rispoli, today about this.  Dr. Rispoli said there is absolutely no scientific basis to make these claims, there is no way a 3-D device can stunt a child's eyes!