What is it about?
Using the placido ring technology, it is possible to track the smoothness of the tearfilm in front of the cornea. After we blink, parts of the precorneal tear breaks up over time, and this is shown as a disturbance of one or more placido rings. The clinical parameter of time from blink to the first break up is very crude, because it does not consider the area of the break up and the position. Here, we studied in greater detail where and how extensive the break up occurs in real patients.
Featured Image
Photo by Mayank Dhanawade on Unsplash
Why is it important?
The break up can be evaluated using a commercially available equipment called the Oculus K5M. Tear stability is now a major diagnostic parameter for dry eye disease, which involved more than 200 million people world wide.
Perspectives
Since assessment of the non invasive break up times do not require addition of fluorescein dye into the eye, it is less likely to artifactually increase tear volume. Community practitioners who are not eye specialists may not have fluorescein dye. This test has great potential for clinical use in the future.
Prof Louis Tong
National University of Singapore
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Spatial Distribution of Noninvasive Break Up Times and Clinical Relevance in Healthy Participants and Mild Dry Eye, Translational Vision Science & Technology, October 2019, Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO),
DOI: 10.1167/tvst.8.5.30.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
