Free treatment for lazy eye? Well free eye care is worth what it costs-but a simple eye drop prescription  may be able to save you a thousand dollars or more in treatment fees. And that’s equivalent to a lot of free office visits.

Forget the pirate patch, eye drops are the treatment of choice today for lazy eye. No more daily struggles with your child to keep an eye patch on, one drop in the morning and your responsibility is done for the day. Lazy eye, (technically referred to as Amblyopia), is the most common cause of permanent sight loss in children and if not treated by age 7 to 9 it persists into adulthood  with permanent damage to the visual cortex area of the brain. It is the leading cause of vision loss in one eye in the 20-70 year old age group, occurring in around 3% of the population.

Most of the information on the success of treatment of lazy eye has been from limited,uncontrolled studies. There is a great opportunity for future learning about improving the treatment of lazy eye.

Amblyopia   is still usually treated with outdated methods of occlusion (patching) of the eye that sees well. Patching therapy typically has very poor compliance, especially since you cannot be with your child every minute of the day. Kids don’t like wearing patches after the novelty wears off and may be subjected to ridicule by peers. Evidence indicates that compliance is probably the most important factor in the outcome of treatment of lazy eye.

Using a cycloplegic eye drop that prevents the good eye from focusing forces the lazy eyes to work to see thing at closer distances. As a side effect of the drops the pupil of the good eye stays dilated, so it needs some form of UV protection in eyeglasses or sunglasses. This is not a new method but it has started catching on due to recent studies showing it is effective and very well accepted by parents and children. Without a patch blocking one eye completely the child is able to maintain some level of binocular vision which helps the treatment process. It also assures there is no impairment to peripheral vision, making it a safer alternative to a patch.

Atropine is the drop normally used but we substitute homatropine. It is safer and in my opinion there is really no need  to keep the effect lasting overnight while the child is asleep.

There is a tremendous cost and time saving to the parent due to less frequent office visits and a great reduction in the amount of eye exercises needed to restore the sight. If you think there is no way you can get a drop in your child’s eye every day we have a secret for that too. If your child has a lazy eye we can help make it easy and fun!

The sudden appearance of a red spot on the white of your eye can be very unnerving as it appears that the eye is bleeding. When it materializes without a history of trauma or other health problems, there is usually not a serious problem. Still, is hard to imagine anything more disturbing to look at than a blood red eye.

The Front of your eye has a mucous membrane layer called the conjunctiva. This thin transparent tissue forms a loose covering over the white part of the eye, the sclera, and extends under the eyelids. It has a thin layer of surface cells called the epithelium and a layer of connective tissue below this where small blood vessels,nerves, goblet cells (that secrete mucous) are located. The conjunctiva is extremely sensitive to inflammation because of a large number of mast cells(the cells that release histamine when you are exposed to an allergen).

Since the conjunctiva is loosely bound to the underlying sclera there is a potential space for blood to accumulate in.  The small blood vessels in the tissue are capillaries, and they have fenestration to allow fluid exchange. Because they are so small and are subject to more movement and subsequent shearing forces in the loose conjunctiva tissue, it is not uncommon for a vessel to break and bleed. This blood spreads out in the space underneath the conjunctiva and appears to be a much larger volume than it is due to the thinness of the film of blood.

A number of events can trigger a hemorrhage under the conjunctiva.  Coughing, vomiting, sneezing, straining for a bowel movement all increase blood pressure temporarily and can cause a sub-conjunctiva hemorrhage. Some  activities such as rides at amusement parks with rapid acceleration and deceleration  increase the blood pressure in the thoracic cavity and the head, which has been shown to cause  hemorrhages. Merry go rounds can have the same effect. Rubbing your eyes may also mechanically burst a capillary as can any form of trauma to the eye.

Conjunctiva  hemorrhages are not painful and do not lead to sight loss. They are equivalent to a bruise and undergo color changes over several weeks as they resolve and gradually reabsorb.

Any bleeding seen on the eye needs a thorough eye examination by your eye doctor to rule out other serious problems. Trauma could cause an unknown eye perforation that results in blindness if not treated. Any recurrent episodes warrant evaluation for underlying problems and diseases that make you more susceptible to having fragile blood vessels.

High blood pressure, arteriosclerosis (accumulation of cholesterol on your blood vessels), some types of blood cancers,diabetes,HIV and other diseases increase the frequency of conjunctiva hemorrhages. Drugs can cause hemorrhages including blood thinners (Coumadin), aspirin, ibuprofen (Advil), and even Birth Control Pills in rare instances. Some systemic diseases; flu,measles, malaria, and rare viruses similar to Ebola are factors.
Conjunctival hemorrhage has been reported as a result of embolism from breoken bones and different types of surgery.

Some viral eye infections can cause  hemorrhagic conjunctivitis. Acute hemorrhagic conjunctivitis is a specific viral disease seen more commonly in lessor developed countries and is characterized by large outbreaks of eye infections with conjuctival hemorrhages.

One other rare cause of  conjunctiva hemorrhage is referred to as Vicarious Menstruation. Little or no uterine bleeding occurs but bleeding occurs monthly and can occur almost anywhere on the body, though it is more common in the respiratory track,noes, gums, and conjunctiva. There have been patients who have eye hemorrhages every month at the time of their menstrual cycle.

Relax, Call the office and let us take a look at your eye. The odds are overwhelming it is an innocuous event that will causes you no problems other than a slightly scary looking eye.  Although occasionally a torn contact lenses edge can cause the problem, it is often not necessary to stop wearing contact lenses for the eye to heal. If you have teenagers tell them “Twilight” wasn’t really fictions after all!

The conjunctiva tissue is small but vital to keeping mucous on your eye surface for a healthy tear film, allows the eyelid to smoothly resurface the cornea on and keep your vision clear, while preventing dry eyes. It is very active in the eyes own immuine system. Make sure you keep it healthy with routine eye check ups. Most vision insurance plans like Vision Service Plan (VSP) provide well coverage visits.

My son signed me up to help and receive a back stage pass for for Video Games Live Sunday night in Fort Collins,Colorado at the Events Center. What an impressive show introducing the Fort Collins Symphony and the Larimer Chorale to a young generation of gamers and exposing the multi-talented creativity that goes into video game production. Tommy Tallarico and Jack Wall put on a flawless performance. I was entranced by the piano playing of Lee Ann Leung. As an optometrist I have done some vision therapy training on eye hand coordination but this was way beyond anything I have ever seen. Her hands move so fast they are a blur and it does not seem possible to hit the notes at that speed. This is a show worth seeing. And BTW, make sure you have an up to date pair of eyeglasses or contact lenses or you will miss just how fast those hands fly over the piano!
A native of Springfield, Massachusetts, Tallarico entered the video game industry in 1991, working on more than 250 games Jack Wall is an American video game music composer. He has worked on video game music for over thirty games including the Myst franchise, Splinter Cell, Jade Empire, and Mass Effect.Currently, Wall is the conductor for Video Games Live, a concert featuring popular video game music performed by live orchestras and choirs. He along with fellow game composer Tommy Tallarico and many other industry leaders have worked over five years putting that show together. In another collaboration with Tommy Tallarico, Jack Wall is also co-founder of also known as the Video Game Pianist or the Blindfolded Pianist, is one of the first pianists to gain worldwide recognition for playing popular video game music on the piano, both in concert venues and in online videos.

Unlike many recognized musicians, Leung’s breakthrough occurred almost entirely online when, on May 10, 2004, a video of him playing the Super Mario Bros theme blindfolded appeared on numerous viral video websites.
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Lee Ann Leung

A fun new movie I recently went to see was Monsters vs. Aliens. It started just before a wedding with a bride growing (not glowing) from meteorite exposure, to enormous height and strength. Reese Witherspoon supplies the voice. Not a great movie but it is fun and the technology is fascinating. Monsters vs. Aliens was released on almost every 3-D screen avaible today with a count over 2000 and growing.Projections are for 40 new 3-D films within the next three years. RealD technology utilizes circular polarization, a technique with the polarization varying in a clockwise or counterclockwise direction. In Optometrists offices, polarized lenses and images are utilized in one constant plane tests for lazy eye (amblyopia) or crossed eyes (strabismus). Eye Doctors also use polarized equipment when treating binocular dysfunction for eyestrain, double vision, and convergence insufficiency causing vision related reading problems. Quality sunglasses enhance vision by using a fixed plane polarization to block reflections that occur most frequently from the surface of water. The RealD technology is comes with a high price tag costing theatres $50,000 to $70,000 per screen for the digital projection equipment and additional licensing fees. That’s why there is a nice little surcharge ($2.50 in Fort Collins) for the special eyeglasses needed. The neat thing is the circular polarization helps you maintain binocular vision and lessens eyestrain when you tilt your head, unlike older technologies. Less squinting and your eyes won’t leave the theatre with dry eyes from staring throughout the film trying not to see double. The first 3-D film shown to a paying audience was The Power of Love in Los Angeles in 1922. It was projected with anaglyphs, which involves showing a green image to one eye and a red image to the other which are shown from slightly different view points. Anaglyphs are still used by Optometrist in vision therapy for problems like Computer Vision Syndrome. Looking to the future, Steven Spielberg started work on a 3-D system in 2005 using plasma screens that is supposed to work without any special glasses! Coming to a TV near you some day.