ELEPHANT FITTED WITH A CONTACT LENS

An elephant at a Dutch zoo has become the first in Europe to be fitted with a contact lens. Win Thida, a 45-year-old Asian elephant residing at Amsterdam’s Artis Zoo, injured her eye during an altercation with a fellow elephant that left her with a scratched cornea. The scratch caused her eye to continue watering and she had trouble keeping it open due to increased glare associated with a damaged cornea.

The zoo called in veterinarian Anne-Marie Verbruggen who has had experience fitting horses with contact lenses to help Win Thida’s cornea from becoming infected. This was Verbruggen’s first attempt at fitting an elephant with a contact. "The main difficulty was her height," Verbruggen told the Irish Times. "Elephants can't lie down for long before their immense weight impairs their breathing, so I used a ladder to get close enough. It wasn't ideal, but it worked. She seemed happier straight away."

Win Thida had to be anaesthetized in a standing position and was required to train daily with Verbruggen for weeks in preparation for the procedure. It took tall ladder and a support team to complete to process. The contact lens was fitted in under an hour and Win Thida’s cornea should now be able to heal properly. Win Thida was born in Burma in 1967 and arrived in the Netherlands in 1989. She has resided at the Artis Zoo since 2004.

An article published in the Australian Optometry Association March Newsletter has claimed that researchers have found that Australian children are four times more likely to wear sunglasses for UV protection if their parent’s do.

Dr Suzanne Dobbinson, lead author of the study conducted by the Australian Cancer Council and published in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, has said ‘there is a very strong relationship between parents and children when it comes to specific sun protection behaviour'. 1140 parents of children aged up to 11 years were surveyed and it was found that generally, 64% of children wore hats for sun protection, 5j8% used SPF 15+ sunscreen, and only 11% used sunglasses. 

Australia is considered to have one of the most sophisticated UV protection policies in the world. Our ‘Sunsmart’ program is recognised as the gold standard by the World Health Organisation’s Collaborative Centre for UV Protection.  As such we should take note that sun damage to young children, particularly when encountered in the UV danger period of 11am to 3pm, can be hazardous to their health later in life. The effects of sun damage to the eye include: pterygia (yellowish tissue growth on the whites of the eyes), early cataract, sun cancers, early macular degeneration and photokeratitis.

Please give us a call if you have any concerns about your childs vision and would like some more information on types, styles and brands of sunglasses. 

Pop into Gerry and Johnson Optometrists for your kid’s sunnies today!

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR HEALTHY EYES   

Video Games: Are they damaging your vision?

Video games are rapidly improving and in 30 years we have gone from vector (shapes and lines) to sprite (2D pixelated images) to polygon (3D graphics). Video games are also one of the most popular forms of media with the Call of Duty Franchise selling over 100 million copies. That's at least 200 million eyes looking at a TV for on average 9 hours a week or 19 days a year.

Video games are like cartoons; remember the original Mario? Nintendo would place many still images of Mario together so whenever he moved he looked like he was actually walking like any normal man (if we were all pixelated of course!). Game developers program the sprites to flick quickly between each other which gives the impression that Mario is actually walking! This action requires both your brain and eyes to work together - sprites are very simple whereas polygons require your brain to work even harder as your brain has to process a 3D image doing the same thing. This tires your brain out fairly quickly and this fatigue is what some researchers are worried about. 

The theory is that video games in large doses can cause strain on the eyes. This is called computer vision syndrome - some of the symptoms include blurry vision, headaches, eye irritation and double vision. Up until recently computer vision syndrome's symptoms was only a worry for adults, but now that we all have easier access to screens with tablets, phones, computers, TV and consoles even children are displaying the symptoms too! Eye health professionals have recommended limiting use time of electronics, and whenever playing video games make sure to look at an object approximately 6 meters away from you every 15 minutes. Also, make sure to take short breaks every hour and don't forget to see your Optometrist regularly. I hope you've learnt something interesting!

In the celebrity world who has lost their sight to Glaucoma? Which rockstar is sporting a 'bionic eye'? What is a retinal detachment; and which celebrities have had eye related injuries on the set of movies?

Every day we are bombarded with gossip about celebrities in magazines, but here at Gerry & Johnson Optometrists we are only interested in celebrities with eye problems and how they have strived to deal with such issues. Stevie Wonder, who has been blind since shortly after birth, is an American singer-songwriter and activist as famous for his music as he is about his lack of vision. Wonder’s blindness is a result of his premature birth - the blood vessels at the back of his eyes had not properly developed, causing his retinas to detach. The medical term for this condition is retinopathy of prematurity, or ROP, and while it may have been exacerbated by the oxygen pumped into his incubator, this was not the primary cause of his blindness. 

Another interesting celebrity case is lead singer of British Rock band Radiohead, Thom Yorke. Thom spoke up about his condition in an interview,

“When I was born my left eye was completely paralysed. My eyelid was permanently shut and they thought it would be like that for the rest of my life. Then some specialist bloke realised he could graft a muscle in, like a bionic eye. So I had 5 major operations between the age of nought to 6. They messed up the last one and I went half blind. I can kind of see, I can judge when I hit something but that’s about it.”

Ray Charles' story is quite inspirational as his blindness never stopped him from learning to ride a bike, play cards, use stairs or even fly an airplane. Ray Charles  merely used other senses; he judged distance by sound, and learned to sharpen his memory. He lost his sight at the age of five not long after witnessing his brother’s drowning. However medical experts agree that glaucoma was the culprit, not trauma. According to Glaucoma Australia, glaucoma is the ’Sneak thief of sight’ and is the leading cause of irreversible blindness worldwide. Glaucoma is part of a group of eye diseases in which the optic nerve at the back of the eye is slowly destroyed. In most people this damage is due to an increased pressure inside the eye - a result of blockage of the circulation of aqueous, or its drainage. In other patients the damage may be caused by poor blood supply to the vital optic nerve fibres, a weakness in the structure of the nerve, and/or a problem in the health of the nerve fibres themselves.

After a mishap on-set, Shia LaBeouf was quoted discussing the gruesome eye injury he received while filming the Transformers sequel. LaBeouf impaled his face on a spike, leading to heavy bleeding, but there was fortunately no permanent damage. LaBeouf isn’t the only celebrity who’s received an eye injury on-set – in 2006, Teri Hatcher was injured while filming Desperate Housewives after a light bulb exploded. As a result of the explosion, Hatcher had glass shards lodged in her eye and a scratched cornea, but recovered shortly thereafter.

Other injured celebrities on-set include Halle Berry, who got smoke grenade shards in her eye filming Die Another Day, and Daniel Craig, who suffered from a bruised eye filming Casino Royale. Finally, some celebrities have received attention for undergoing laser eye surgery – Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman and Tiger Woods, to name a few. As this procedure becomes more and more commonplace, there will no doubt be increasing numbers of celebrities seeking treatment to correct their visual problems once and for all.

Gerry & Johnson Optometrists definitely don't like to focus on negative eye issues, as we strive to give everyone the vision to achieve their best! However, we do like to educate our patients about how the eye works and what issues may arise. If you ever have any questions about your eyes, no matter how menial we are happy to give you advice and answer your questions. Our optometrists Kate, Courtenay and Marissa are always happy to answer technical questions and our optical dispensers Katie, Anna, Leah and Elle will be happy to answer questions about contact lenses, optical lenses, specialised sunglasses and other vision correction options. We look forward to hearing from you :)