Top optometry blogs of 2024: cataract surgery, LASIK, expanding scope of practice
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A number of key opinion leaders submit blogs to Healio Optometry, and two of our most popular bloggers are Scott Edmonds, OD, FAAO, and Oliver Kuhn-Wilken, OD. Here are their top posts over the past year.
BLOG: The good, the bad and the ugly in optometry news
Optometry in the 21st century has moved strongly toward evidence-based medicine, with the American Optometric Association even publishing a 14-step process to assist in the development of an evidence-based practice, Edmonds said.
However, for those of us in the trenches, we also rely on new information, which is often available at a fast-and-furious pace. Read more.
BLOG: Know the 5 contraindications to cataract surgery
“The one who knows when not to act is wise,” the playwright Euripides wrote over 2,400 years ago. Are you wise enough to know the situations in which you should not send a patient with a cataract for surgery?
Most optometrists feel comfortable with the primary indication for cataract surgery: visual function that no longer meets the patient’s needs and for which cataract surgery provides a reasonable likelihood of improved vision. Kuhn-Wilken details five important cases in which a patient with a cataract should not receive cataract surgery. Read more.
BLOG: Is LASIK safe at altitude?
The last place anyone wants to have an ophthalmic emergency is standing on top of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, at 19,341 feet above sea level and days from any medical care.
But one of Kuhn-Wilken’s myopic patients was a mountaineer and had plans to summit Kilimanjaro, as well as dozens of other peaks in Africa and in South America. Before committing to refractive surgery, she wanted to know the risk at high altitudes to eyes that have had LASIK. Read more.
BLOG: The surprising story of how blue eyes are like motorcycle smoke
The color of a blue iris is not produced by so-called pigment coloring — the simple form of selective color absorption that produces the hue of everyday objects like blueberries or blue jeans, according to Kuhn-Wilken.
Pigment coloring depends on pigment molecules, but blue eyes contain no blue pigment. Instead, blue irides get their color because of how their microscopic structure interacts with visible light, a process called structural color. Read more.
BLOG: What are the odds of permanent vision loss because of cataract surgery?
What are the odds of a really serious complication from cataract surgery, a complication that would permanently decrease vision?
Ninety-seven percent of all cataract surgeries proceed with no complications, and the vast majority of the remainder only entail a longer healing time with greater visits, Kuhn-Wilken said. Nevertheless, there are at least three known complications that can result in permanent loss of vision from cataract surgery. Read more.
BLOG: Considerations for expanding the scope of optometry
As a past president of the Pennsylvania Optometric Association, Edmonds is very familiar with how our profession expands its scope of practice.
We are a legislated profession, and changes in our scope of practice occur through passing state laws in each commonwealth, state or territory. Read more.