Just Say Yes to (Some) Drugs

Optometrists manage more anterior segment disease than anyone, and it’s critical that we have the pharma knowledge to treat these patients appropriately. This month’s annual pharmaceutical issue provides detailed advice to elevate your practice so you can give patients much-needed relieve and recovery. I’d like to preface this article series with a few thoughts from my perspective as both a clinician and an educator.

Know Your Systemic Meds: The Top 10 to Track

While systemic medications are often necessary for the patient’s long-term health, ocular side effects, as minor as dry eye and as serious as macular toxicity, can challenge the treatment process, often leading to modification or even discontinuation of the medication.

Optometrists must be prepared to manage and comanage patients who present with concurrent medication use and ocular concerns. Here, we discuss some of the commonly prescribed systemic medications with serious ocular side effects, and what to look out for.

Presbyopia: The State of Surgical Correction

The shortcomings of current techniques have made many doctors skeptical of any new technique for presbyopia correction. Despite this, several newly approved options show potential to earn back their trust.

Fresnel Prism to the Rescue

Perhaps the most common complaint we encounter is double vision. This occurs for a multitude of reasons, including muscle and nerve injury, and can be quite severe. In these situations, the extent may vary depending on the gaze and head position. In the short term, we often use occlusion—either binasal or spot—to eliminate the double vision and evaluate the visual system weeks later as the visual, and cognitive and control systems come back online. For comitant diplopia, we often investigate the use of prism to attempt to restore single vision. The two cases presented here demonstrate how the use of temporary Frensel prism can get your patients on the road to recovery quickly and effectively.