On April 10, 2021, Seniors Today hosted its weekly Health Live session with leading eye specialist Dr Anand Shroff to speak on eye care for senior citizens. Dr Noor Gill captured the takeaways
Dr Anand Shroff is a leading eye specialist and surgeon with specialisation in ReLEx Smile, Lasik, Bladeless EpiLasik, C3R, Glaucoma and Corneal disorders, Cataract including accommodative and toric implants.
An experienced Anterior Segment and Refractive Surgeon and a reputed educator and researcher, he has trained several ophthalmologists from all over the world during LASIK workshops in India and Europe. Dr Shroff is one of the most experienced refractive surgeons, with over 17 years of experience as a LASIK and Cataract surgeon. He has performed over 20,000 cataract surgeries and 20,000 LASIK procedures and counting. Additionally a Glaucoma specialist; he runs the Glaucoma Clinic at Shroff Eye, performing various laser treatments and filtering surgeries with implants.
In India, he is one of the first ophthalmologists to use advanced accommodative and multifocal lens implant technology and methods. He is the pioneer of wave – front guided and topography-guided LASIK in the country. He is the first in India and one of only few in the world to use the ‘Concerto 500 Hz laser’. A former consulting surgeon of Bombay Hospital, he currently works at Shroff Eye Hospital in Bandra and Shroff Eye Clinic on Marine Drive, both in Mumbai.
– Whenever you’re reading here are a few things you should take care of:
- Make sure that there is good lighting in the room and on your reading material. Good lighting relieves the strain from your eyes.
- If you’re over 40 years of age and read for over two hours on an electronic device or over a screen, you might need a near number to read. It is best not to read with a bifocal or a progressive glass, and get a separate number for reading.
- Look straight at your book instead of looking down at it to read.
– Here are a few things that Dr Shroff enlisted that you need to look out for, if you are someone who needs to or has been advised to undergo a cataract surgery but are unable to undergo the procedure due to Covid or any other personal reasons:
- You can make out that the heterogeneity in the lens is increasing as you might notice a change in your vision.
- Blurry or hazy vision also indicates progression of the disease
- However, there are some forms of cataract where you can’t make out or tell if it has progressed and in these cases it is best to go and visit your doctor.
- But if your symptoms haven’t aggravated, you can wait for a month or two if you want to
– Generally after you wake up from a nap or after a long time, since the eyes have been shut for a long time it gets a little hot and humid in the eye so it is normal to have a little mucus coming, that can happen. But if it is dry and itchy, one will have to get it examined to form a proper diagnosis and to find out the cause for it and treat it.
- Dry eye is when you do not have enough tears and that is when the eye burns and starts watering at the slightest draft of air. The sensitivity to light is also increased. That is a dry eye in its true sense.
- People usually tend to confuse “dry eyes” with “dryness of the eyes” which is completely different. Dryness of eyes is a symptom of allergy and so is itching. The eyes feel rough and dry because the surface is slightly roughened and allergic and this needs to be treated as an allergy.
- Dr Shroff recommends Olopat Max eyedrops 2-3 times a day for dryness of the eyes.
– Diabetes does have an impact on majorly the retina in the eyes and on the lens. If you have had an intraocular lens implant, the implanted lens will not be affected by diabetes. Diabetes affects mainly the lens in the form of cataract and the retina. The retina needs to be checked up once a year after dilating the pupils.
– If you have dry skin over the eyelids, Dr Shroff says that he usually prescribes an ointment for external use over the eye lids for 3-4 days and that takes care of the dryness over the eyelids.
– The cornea of the eye has a very thin surface which is called the surface epithelium, sometimes after an injury, the epithelium can get loose. When you go to bed and start to dream, sometimes your eye gets stuck to the eyelid. So when you start dreaming and having rapid eye movement it pulls at the epithelium. When you wake up the next morning, you might complain of pain in the eye along with a gritty sensation and some watering which subsides within 10-15 minutes.
– If you are someone who has been complaining of floaters after a cataract surgery, here’s what Dr. Anand has to say:
Sometimes you already have floaters that are there in the jelly of the eye which is called the “vitreous humour”. The vitreous is right next to the lens, which is extracted and replaced with an intraocular lens implant during a cataract surgery. There is a thin layer between the vitreous and the lens. And during cataract surgery, while operating within the bag, there is fluid around the lens which can cause waves and thus a disturbance to the vitreous; this can lead to a floater in the periphery to come within the visual field. But these usually go away after sometime. Some other times, very fine particles from the front can go to the back of the eye and present as floaters as well.
– You need to be careful while administering eye drops. Take extra care to not blink your eyes right after you’ve put the eye drops, this can lead to the eye drops entering the nose and the throat and can cause irritation of the nose and throat.
– A lot of people, who have been working from home during these times, complain of watering of the eyes and that is because of the ceiling fan. This is because our eyes are made for the outdoors, when you stare at a point for a long time, nature assumes you’re preparing/ getting ready to kill and will not let you blink. When we work on laptop and mobile screens, our blinking rate drops by 80-85% and at that point if the ceiling fan is on, your eyes get dry, start to burn and in turn start watering.
– Suggestions for someone suffering from a spasm of the eyelids:
- In case you have allergies, one part of your eyelids goes into a twitch on its own. This happens when triggered by an allergen. It usually comes and goes. For this you can use any anti-allergy eye drops.
- If your whole eye undergoes the twitch/ spasm, then it is a part of the face and it is what we call a ‘hemi-facial spasm’, which indicates a problem with your facial nerve, which can, over the course of time involve your whole face.
– Early signs of cataract:
- Cataracts can often present with no signs as well
- Cataracts can go white or completely black in their final stages.
- If it goes black, it hardens and the colour of the lens changes from light grey to light yellow, to brow and finally turns to black. This can present with loss of vision and one might notice a change in your prescription number.
- If it is white, you can get hazy, smoky vision.
- Central cataracts can present with difficulty with night lights.
- But if you have smoky vision and find the need to constantly change your number, you should have it looked at.
– You should get your eye checked once a year. You should visit not just the optician but also the ophthalmologist once a year.
Read takeaways of the previous webinars conducted by Dr Anand Shroff for Seniors Today:
Takeaways from Health Live @ Seniors Today with Dr Anand Shroff
