Tooth used to restore sight.

USA Today (9/17, Marcus) reports that on Wednesday, physicians from the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine announced that "they had performed a vision-restoring surgery that used" a "60-year-old patient's tooth" to restore her sight. Over the Labor Day weekend, physicians there performed surgery that allowed Sharron Thornton "to see for the first time in nine years." Following the surgery, Thornton "was able to see 20/60" instead of "only shadows," surgeon Victor Perez, MD, explained.

The Miami Herald (9/17, Tasker) reports that during the operation, "surgeons removed one of" Thornton's "teeth, drilled a hole in it, inserted a plastic lens into the hole, and implanted the tooth-lens combination into her eye." As a result of this procedure, "the first such operation in the United States," Thornton can now "recognize faces and read a newspaper with a magnifying glass." Her physicians say "she should get better vision once she is fully healed and fitted with glasses."

"The tooth and the lens were implanted under the patient's skin in the cheek or shoulder for two months so they could bond, then they were carefully implanted in the center of the eye after a series of procedures to prepare the socket," the AFP (9/17) reports. A statement from the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute explained, "A hole is made in the mucosa for the prosthetic lens, which protrudes slightly from the eye and enables light to re-enter the eye allowing the patient to see once again."

The Los Angeles Times (9/16, Maugh) "Booster Shots" blog reported that Thornton "was blinded by Stevens-Johnson syndrome in 2000." The Wall Street Journal (9/16, Wang) "Health Blog" and CNN (9/17) also covered the story.

Eyelid common site for skin cancer, experts say.

California's San Gabriel Valley Tribune (9/18, Jansen) reports that the eyelid "is one of the most common sites for skin cancer, accounting for as much as 10 percent of all skin cancers. Left untreated," cancers there "could lead to significant injury and even blindness." The Skin Cancer Foundation explained that "with their delicate structure and greater exposure to the sun, the eyes and surrounding areas are particularly prone to cancers," and people who have "fair skin, light eyes," or "who are older have an increased risk of skin cancer and eye diseases." The "most common" form of cancer of the eyelid is "basal cell carcinoma." To prevent eyelid cancer, people should wear sunscreen, wear wide-brimmed hats, and "wear sunglasses with 99-100 percent UV protection year-round."

Experimental procedure treats keratoconus, ectasia.

Keratoconus is a disorder where the cornea becomes abnormally thin in places. The cornea then develops an irregular curvature because it bulges out in those thin spots. The underlying cause is probably an increased amount of an enzyme which breaks down the crosslinks between collagen, an elastic molecule that helps hold the corneal shape. In early keratoconus, the vision is corrected with standard contacts and glasses. As the disease progresses, specially designed rigid lenses are used to correct the vision, but they do not halt or slow disease progression. Advanced keratoconus (either the cornea is too irregular to fit with specially designed contacts or it is scarred to the point functional vision is no longer possible) is a significant reason for corneal transplant. While corneal transplants do result in a clear cornea, they aren't a perfect solution. The recipient is on drops to prevent graft rejection for a long time and sometimes high amounts of astigmatism post-surgery. Having a treatment earlier in the disease process would be a huge improvement.

On its website, WLS-TV Chicago (2/25), an ABC affiliate, reported that "corneal collagen crosslinking with Riboflavin (CXL) is an experimental treatment for...keratoconus and ectasia. Currently, the conditions have no medical treatment and are responsible for 15 percent of corneal transplants in the United States." The "CXL treatment works by increasing collagen crosslinking in the cornea. The crosslinks are responsible for maintaining the cornea's round shape." In a procedure performed "in the doctor's office and" lasting "only a half hour," the corneal epithelium is first removed. Next, "vitamin B, or riboflavin, drops saturate the eye, which is then exposed to ultraviolet light." The "reaction between the ultraviolet light and the riboflavin...links the collagen molecules in the cornea, and in doing so, makes it stiffer than it otherwise would be," thereby helping to alleviate the two conditions. According to WLS-TV, "preliminary results have shown CXL effectively stabilizes eyes."

Report indicates uninsured may suffer poorer health outcomes.

Another tidbit of the "Really...You don't say?!" category.

WebMD (2/24, Zwillich) reported, "The Institute of Medicine (IOM) says its latest report shows overwhelming evidence that a lack of health insurance has direct health effects on children and adults." The report "lays out broad evidence that people without insurance suffer worse health outcomes and tend to die more quickly than similar people with coverage." For instance, according to the report, "uninsured adults with heart failure or who suffer a heart attack are more likely to die than comparable patients with coverage." The report also indicates that "widespread lack of insurance may even have a negative effect on the access to healthcare of fully-insured people," because "health providers tend to focus their attention on 'well-capitalized' areas." And, "as the number of uninsured rise, providers may take flight, leaving insured and uninsured alike without easy access to service."

Modern Healthcare (2/24, Vesely) added that the IOM urged "Congress and the Obama administration...to act by next year to solve the crisis of the uninsured." The report notes that "safety net services aren't enough to prevent avoidable illnesses and premature deaths."

Lions on YouTube and MySpace, Oh My!

From the January/February 2009 Border Crossing

On June 30, 2008, LCI launched it's YouTube channel with the banner slogan "We Give..We Share...We Inspire...We Serve!" This service uses video clips from the Lions Quarterly Journal to show the "YouTube Generation" just how cool it is to serve the world as Lions, and invites "YouTubers" to respond with their channel comments and with comments on the various videos. And respond they have! The Lions channel has 30,000 channel views, over a thousand friends and some five hundred subscribers. As it happens, MD19 is well represented in this outreach effort. The LQ Christmas Ship video is the fifth most watched on the web site. Visit www.youtube.com/lionsclub.org.

MySpace offers LCI a somewhat broader pallet with which to paint a picture of Lions activities across the world. There is space set aside to promote our relationship with other nonprofits, such as the Special Olympics, Habitat for humanity, and the Carter Center. We also find out the LCI's official zodiac sign is a Gemini. Did not know that? There is also a Lions Blog page where LCI announces breaking events. At the beginning of last December--yes, you guessed it!--the LQ Christmas Ship video was the featured blog entry. My space offers many different kinds of spaces in which to operate and, thus far, LCI has exploited only a few. So in the future, look for an even greater presence on MySpace, perhaps in the photo and video gallery sections, and on the events on the forums pages. Visit www.myspace.com/lionsclubsorg.

LCI is also on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Lions-Clubs-International/27922222491

Rise in blood sugar levels may cause poorer brain function in people with type 2 diabetes, study suggests.

HealthDay (2/19, Preidt) reported, "A rise in blood sugar levels causes poorer brain function in people with type 2 diabetes, according to a study" published in the February issue of Diabetes Care "that included nearly 3,000 people aged 55 and older." The subjects, "who were part of a larger study on cardiovascular risk in diabetes, underwent cognitive tests designed to measure several aspects of memory function." Dr. Jeff Williamson, of Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, and colleagues, "found that a one percent increase in A1C levels (average blood glucose levels over a period of two to three months) was associated with slightly lower scores on tests of psychomotor speed, global cognitive function, memory and multi-tasking."

This brings up the whole "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" line of questioning. In my experience with diabetics, it seems like the people who have the worst complications (which is almost always associated with the higher hemoglobin A1c levels) are the ones who just don't seem to "get" it. They typically are some of my the most "non-compliant" patients--resistant to making necessary lifestyle changes to control the diabetes and even to getting treatment. I would argue some of this resistance could be related to lower cognitive function. But do diabetics with complications as a whole innately have lower cognitive function? If they were tested before the diabetes was out of control, would they still score lower on these tests? Is lower cognitive function possibly part of the reason why these patients have difficulty controlling blood sugar in the first place???

Researchers say vision problems may be common among children who already have sensorineural hearing loss.

MedPage Today (2/16, Phend) reported that, according to a study published in the Feb. issue of the Archives of Otolaryngology -- Head & Neck Surgery, "vision problems are common among children who already have sensorineural hearing loss." During their "retrospective medical record review" of "226 children ages 18 and younger with sensorineural hearing loss and ophthalmologic evaluation...from 2000 through 2007," David H. Chi, M.D., of the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, and colleagues found that "the occurrence of ophthalmologic findings in children with sensorineural hearing loss was 21.7 percent, including refractive problems in 10.2 percent of the children and non-refractive abnormalities in 12.8 percent." Therefore, the authors "recommended routine ophthalmologic examination for all children with sensorineural hearing loss in order to make an early diagnosis and start interventions to maximize visual acuity." Medscape (2/16, Barclay) also covered the story.

Scientist creates inexpensive, self-adjusting eyeglasses.

The Chicago Tribune (2/3, Goering) reports that "eyeglasses using [a] simple, self-adjusting technology are now poised to revolutionize the way the world's poor -- and quite possibly the rest of us -- see, potentially coming to the aid of billions who struggle to squint enough to farm, study, drive or hold down any job." Joshua Silver, an Oxford University atomic physicist, "was fiddling around one day with a cheap water-filled lens he'd built...when he noticed" that "by adding or removing water he could not only change the power of the lens...but he also could use it to very accurately correct his own nearsightedness when he looked through it." Silver "hopes to find funding to distribute a billion pairs to people around the world too poor to afford glasses or living in places like sub-Saharan Africa, where the ratio of opticians to residents is purportedly one to one million." Thus far, he "has...turned out about 30,000 pairs of the cheap glasses."

Interesting concept. Of course, new lenses would be necessary in the case of scratches, broken glasses, and if a person needed bifocals. I had read about this once before--the lenses can only correct for near or far-sightedness, not astigmatism.

Nearly one-third of U.S. adults age 65 and older have diabetes, researchers say.

UPI (1/28) reports, "Nearly one-third of U.S. adults age 65 and older have diabetes, while an additional 30 percent have pre-diabetes," according to the 2005-2006 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey published in Diabetes Care. The survey "also found 13 percent of adults age 20 and older have diabetes, but 40 percent of them have not been diagnosed."

AOA First Look, 1/28/2009

Unprotected Paint Ball is a Bad Idea

This kind of falls under the "duh" category, but I thought I would share anyway. It came through the AOA First Look email update I received this morning. What are people thinking???

Researchers say paintball may cause severe, "visually devastating" eye injuries.

Canada's CTV (1/15) reported that a study published in the American Journal of Ophthalmology "is warning that" paintball "can cause severe and 'visually devastating' eye injuries." During the game, paint pellets can "fly up to speeds of 300 km per hour." While "paintball facilities" usually "require customers to wear protective eye goggles," the majority of "injuries studied by medical professionals involve injuries at home or in unsupervised and unofficial settings." For the study, researchers from the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute "analyzed the characteristics and outcomes of 36 patients treated for paintball injuries between 1998 and 2005." The investigators found that "eye injuries secondary to high-velocity paintballs can cause tremendous damage to vital ocular structures," including ruptured eyeballs and detached retinas, "often requiring extensive surgical intervention," and resulting in loss of vision. Notably, "all of the patients were injured when using paintballs in a 'non-recreational, uncontrolled setting,'" the study found.

CDC study projects large increase in rates of diabetes-related eye diseases.

As reported by MedPage Today Monday, HealthDay (12/9, Preidt) reported that, according to a study published in the Dec. issue of the Archives of Ophthalmology, "The number of Americans with diabetic retinopathy is expected to increase from 5.5 million to 16 million by the year 2050." Researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention "analyzed data from the 2004 National Health Interview Survey and the U.S. Census Bureau to predict the number of Americans with diabetes who will have diabetic retinopathy, vision-threatening diabetic retinopathy, glaucoma, and cataracts in 2050, when the country's population is expected to be 402 million." The investigators also predicted that vision-threatening diabetic retinopathy cases "will increase from 1.2 million to 3.4 million," and that "cataract cases among whites and blacks age 40 or older with diabetes will increase 235 percent." In addition, "glaucoma cases among Hispanics age 65 and older with diabetes will increase 12-fold."

AOA First Look, Dec 10, 2008

Survey indicates just three percent of Americans are concerned about diabetes.

This was in an email newsletter from the American Optometric Association. If one of Lions International's goals is to increase awareness of diabetes and the seriousness of it's complications, we've got our work cut out for us.

HealthDay (10/28, Doheny) reported, "While millions of Americans are at risk for developing diabetes, too few perceive the threat it can pose to their health, according to a new survey" commissioned by the American Diabetes Association (ADA). Investigators polled "more than 2,400 U.S. adults," and found that 49 percent "they most feared cancer as a potential health problem," but "just three percent said they worried about diabetes." Yet, "each disease has about the same number of expected new cases each year, more than a million annually." The ADA noted that "overall, one in 10 U.S. adults, or 10 percent, have been diagnosed with diabetes at some point in their lives, compared to six percent who have experienced cancer." The survey also revealed that "after cancer, respondents next feared heart disease, mentioned by 12 percent, and nervous system disorders, noted by 11 percent."

WebMD (10/28, Colihan) quoted Ann Albright, Ph.D., of the ADA, as saying, "Unfortunately, people don't seem to take diabetes seriously, and they don't seem to realize that diabetes -- if left untreated or poorly treated -- can be a very scary disease." She added, "We don't like to unnecessarily scare people, but the findings from this survey are alarming because diabetes is more deadly than these other fears, and Americans are more likely to have a personal experience with diabetes than shark attacks or snake bites."

How to Plant Your Garden

Given the little snow flurries of yesterday and today, it might be a little bit to early to be getting to work in our actual backyard gardens. But the spirit of volunteerism and helping others knows no season.

How To Plant Your Garden

First, you Come to the garden alone, While the dew is still on the roses....

FOR THE GARDEN OF YOUR DAILY LIVING,

PLANT THREE ROWS OF PEAS:


1. Peace of mind
2. Peace of heart
3. Peace of soul

PLANT FOUR ROWS OF SQUASH:


1. Squash gossip
2. Squash indifference
3. Squash grumbling
4. Squash selfishness

PLANT FOUR ROWS OF LETTUCE:


1. Lettuce be faithful
2. Lettuce be kind
3. Lettuce be patient
4. Lettuce really love one another

NO GARDEN IS WITHOUT TURNIPS:


1. Turnip for meetings
2. Turnip for service
3. Turnip to help one another

TO CONCLUDE OUR GARDEN WE MUST HAVE THYME:


1. Thyme for each other
2. Thyme for family
3. Thyme for friends

WATER FREELY WITH PATIENCE AND CULTIVATE WITH LOVE. THERE IS MUCH FRUIT IN YOUR GARDEN BECAUSE YOU REAP WHAT YOU SOW. NOT BAD,HUH?!