Dr. White Presents at Caribbean Eye! Part II

We hear that Dr. White was his usual entertaining self during his presentation of "Osmolarity 401: Advanced Use of Tearlab Osmolarity" at the 2013 Caribbean Eye meeting in San Juan, Puerto Rico! All of the staff at SkyVision Centers has seen the pictures of Linda Blair, both as the "Exorcist" and as the very beautiful woman she is today. While we are all really interested to know how the audience reacted to those pics, what we REALLY want to know is how did Dr. White ever do a complete talk in only 7 minutes?!

After introducing our SkyVision strategy for using the TearLab system for diagnosis Dr. White moved onto the topic of treatment. This is really what sets us apart when it comes to osmolarity. "What people describe as a normal test result we simply view as a 'low' reading on the osmolarity scale," said Dr. White. "Someone who has all of the symptoms that we associate with Dry Eye may or may not have a true dry eye problem in the face of a low osmolarity. If they have other signs of DES we might simply be dealing with the dysfunctional tear syndrome: plenty of tears that just don't work well enough."

The most important thing in the diagnosis and treatment of Ocular Surface Disease, the more general term for Dry Eye, is a patient's symptoms. We use symptoms to determine when to treat, and we then use a patient's symptoms to help us determine how the treatment is going. The osmolarity helps us to choose how we treat.

Dr. White: "If the osmolarity is high we will choose one of the more hypotonic tears like Thera Tears or Blink. These patients usually fall into the group that is best treated with Restasis. On the other hand, someone with Dry Eye symptoms who has a low osmolarity but has other signs of dryness will do better with a tear that is designed to stabilize the tear surface, like Systane Balance or Optive Advanced. These folks tend to do well with a medicine like Azasite."

So there you have it! We'll try to find those pictures of Linda Blair!