More Dry Eyes in the House/NY Times Article

Dry-eye syndrome is growing, and doctors blame smartphones, office buildings.

Click on the link below to the interesting article from the New York Times.

Why Are We Having So Many With Dry Eye?

Smart Glasses by OrCam Can Help Those Who Can Not See

The new Israeli start-up company, OrCam, has recently created a device that is getting a lot of buzz in the optical world as a unique and amazing way for visually impaired people to “read” the world around them.  The camera based system is designed to be of help for replacement or helper of eyesight and for the wearer to be able to read "easily" and move freely.  

While many other devices and apps have come out in the past which claim to help visually impaired people “see” better or translate any text that they encounter, most of them have had very limiting capabilities and didn’t quite work in the ways that they were promised. 

With the OrCam smart glasses, you go right to reading the different objects that are in front of you!  A small camera is attached to the arm of the glasses frames with a thin cable. This cable supports a portable computer than has been designed to be small enough to fit right into the wearer’s pocket. The camera system works by clipping it onto your glasses, then the wearer is able to point out different words or objects in their surroundings and the bone-conduction speaker on the device will read it aloud for them.  OrCam smart glasses are also designed to recognize and speak “text in the wild.” This means anything from a magazine or newspaper that a wearer picks up, to a diverse object in the area such as landmarks, traffic lights and the faces of your friends.

“What is remarkable is that the device learns from the user to recognize a new product,” said Tomaso Poggio, a computer scientist at M.I.T. who is a computer vision expert. “This is more complex than it appears, and, as an expert, I find it really impressive.”

The price range of about $2500 is quite attractive and makes owning the system reasonable for someone who wants the gift of sight.  The price is about the same as an average pair of hearing aids for an older adult.   

In the United States, 21.2 million people over the age of 18 have some kind of visual impairment, including age-related conditions, diseases and birth defects, according to the 2011 National Health Survey by the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics. OrCam said that worldwide there were 342 million adults with significant visual impairment, and that 52 million of them had middle-class incomes.

Look for more exciting updates regarding this new technology.

excerpts taken from recent article by John Markoff/NYTimes and an EyeCare20/20 blog

Dry Eye Disease Awareness Month

Learn more about Dry Eye

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to bring awareness to this often

undiagnosed disease.

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Restasis and Dry Eye

It's hard to believe, but if our math is correct the magnificent Dry Eye medicine Restasis is going to be 10 years old this year! It's hard to imagine any more how terribly difficult it was to treat severe forms of dry eye before the introduction of Restasis.

Dry Eye takes many forms, has multiple causes, and produces many different types of symptoms. Restasis has turned out to be a brilliant treatment for the inflammation that underlies a common cause of Dry Eye, not producing enough tears. Whether the inflammation comes first and causes the dryness or vice versa, a vicious cycle begins where one cause the other. Chronic Restasis use unwinds this vicious cycle and revs up a virtuous cycle.

Dr. White at the Dr. Whiteboard - Video

At Skyvision Centers we have taught our Cleveland patients for years that if Restasis is effective one must continue to take it in order to feel well. Thankfully, once it starts to work Restasis is a really easy eyedrop to use. Deciding what type of Dry Eye you might have and then determining what the best treatment will be is one of our strengths!

As an accredited Dry Eye center, SkyVision will help you to determine the best treatment for your Dry Eye symptoms.