Downsize Your Technology to Enhance Your Practice

In optometric practice, the push toward electronic health records and better technological integration has spurred innovation in diagnostic and patient management devices, including for refraction, intraocular pressure measurement and imaging of pathologies and anatomic variants, just to name a few.

But with these new technologies comes increased expenses. In addition, each instrument has a footprint that has to fit into our sometimes-cramped office spaces with an ideal position for efficient use of time and space—not to mention designed with patient convenience and comfort in mind. That’s where portable technologies come in.

How Early Diagnosis Can Improve AMD Outcomes

There’s plenty that optometrists can do to help patients with early-stage AMD. With an early diagnosis, ODs can take potentially life-altering steps long before patients hit the intermediate stage and are forced to struggle with vision loss. The longer clinicians can keep these patients from advancing to wet AMD and needing injections, the better off they will be. This article describes the value of diagnosing AMD in its earliest stages using functional tests and how you can bring these methods into your clinic today.

A Closer Look at Corneal Inlays

A 50-year-old Caucasian female presents to the clinic reporting that she is tired of her reading glasses. She has perfect ocular health, no distance vision complaints and a distance manifest refraction of -0.5D in both eyes. She wants to know what her options are to reduce her dependence on reading glasses. This scenario is not unusual, and with the recent increased interest in reducing reading spectacle dependence, it will become even more common.

Among the newer additions for presbyopic correction are corneal inlays, which feature their own unique array of benefits and limitations. This article focuses on corneal inlays in the marketplace and how they are making a difference in the lives of presbyopic patients.

Combining Optics and Comfort: Piggyback and Hybrid Lenses

With the recent boom of scleral lenses, practitioners are flooded with a range of lens designs to choose from. Although scleral lenses are the new hot trend, some patients might do better with alternative options such as piggybacking and hybrid contact lenses to improve vision and comfort and maintain long-term corneal health.

The piggyback system consists of a gas permeable (GP) lens fit on top of a soft contact lens. It offers the optics of a GP lens with the comfort of a soft contact lens. Hybrid lenses have a GP lens center surrounded by a soft contact lens skirt. They are similar to the piggyback system in that they, too, provide the optical quality of a GP lens with the comfort of a soft contact lens; but, unlike the piggyback system, they do so in one contact lens. Both of these options can be used as an alternative to conventional lenses. Here, we review the piggyback system and hybrid contact lenses and how they have progressed over the years.