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We commonly see patients who come in saying that their eyes are bleeding.
The patient is usually referring to the white part of their eye, which has turned bright red. The conjunctiva is the outermost layer of the eye and contains very fine blood vessels. If one of these blood vessels breaks, then the blood spreads out underneath the conjunctiva. This is called a subconjunctival hemorrhage.
A subconjunctival hemorrhage doesn't cause any eye pain or affect your vision in any way. Most of the time, a subconjunctival hemorrhage is asymptomatic. It is only noticed when looking at the mirror or when someone else notices the redness of the eye. There should not be any discharge or crusting of your lashes. If any of these symptoms are present, then you might have another eye condition that may need treatment.
What causes a subconjunctival hemorrhage? The most common cause is a spontaneous rupture of a blood vessel. Sometimes vigorous coughing, sneezing, or bearing down can break a blood vessel. Eye trauma and eye surgery are other causes of subconjunctival hemorrhage. Aspirin and anticoagulant medication can make patients more susceptible to a subconjunctival hemorrhage but there is usually no need to stop these medications.
There is no treatment needed for subconjunctival hemorrhage. Sometimes there may be mild irritation and artificial tears can be used. The redness usually increases in size in the first 24 hours and then will slowly get smaller and fade in color. It often
You’ve been diagnosed with a cataract and you’ve been told you should have cataract surgery. The surgeon is also telling you that you should consider paying out-of-pocket for certain features.
Where did this come from? Why should you have to pay out-of-pocket for cataract surgery? Shouldn’t your health insurance just cover it?
In trying to answer these questions, you will first need a little history of both cataract and refractive surgery, which corrects errors of refraction such as nearsightedness, farsightedness, and astigmatism.
Radial keratotomy (RK) was the first widely used refractive surgery for nearsightedness. It was invented in 1974 by Russian ophthalmologist Svyatoslav Fyodorov, and it was the primary refractive procedure done until the mid-1990s. Then it was surpassed by the laser procedure called PRK and then, eventually, LASIK; they are still the predominately pure refractive surgeries done today.
Cataract surgery has its origins all the way back to at least 800 BC in a procedure called couching. In this procedure, the cataract was pushed into the back of the eye with a sharp instrument so the person could look around the cataract. Medically that is all that was done with cataracts until around 1784 when a cataract was actually removed from the eye.
The next big advance was implants to replace the removed cataract. The invention of implants was spurred by Harold Ridley, who recognized that injured Royal Air Force pilots could retain shards of their canopy made out of a substance called PMMA in their
Read more: Why Your Insurance Might Not Cover Everything with Your Cataract Surgery
