Originally Posted by
Optimark
I have some interesting eye problems, which required an Ophthalmologist to diagnose. My sister in-law in Germany is married to an Ophthalmologist; we visit Germany very regularly and in fact only returned a month and a half ago.
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Whilst there this year and staying at their place, my sister in-laws husband told of the second quite serious preventable eye disorder he had unfortunately diagnosed.
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The patient had gone blind in one eye, solely due to that affected eye not being used. There was a very interesting dinner discussion about this problem and the cause. It appears that the patient had been using the high street store bought reading glasses which only cost a few Euros, for quite some years. These have been extremely satisfactory, but there appeared to be a problem for long sight, so the visit to the Ophthalmologist.
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As the wearer was using a pair of lenses that were identical in their dioptre power, eventually the eye with the best correction was the one the brain used for virtually all seeing when these optics were used. As the eye not being used was used less and less, the body virtually stopped using it altogether. This resulted in virtual blindness in the weaker eye.
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This was the second case my sister in-laws husband had diagnosed in the last year or so, an effect he believes is due to people not understanding some of the finer points of using or losing, a function or body part.
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Whilst he isn’t of the opinion that the supermarket bought reading optics should be banned, he believes that their usage should be limited to reading of a menu in a restaurant or scanning documents at a legal meeting and such. Not for outright reading of novels, newspapers and other intense reading exercises.
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He has to compulsorily retire next year, so he doesn’t have a boat to push regarding seeing an Ophthalmologist or Optometrist. He did stress that after a certain age, which was mid fifties, one should see an Ophthalmologist at least once for a general check, rather than an Optometrist.
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The general gist of his talk/discussion, was that once there was some kind of funny business with your eyes, see an Ophthalmologist pronto. Knowing what I know about my own eye problems, and having been to different Optometrists and finally to an Ophthalmologist for a correct diagnosis, about a problem that was deceptively simple to mis-diagnose, I would also suggest you see an Ophthalmologist
Mick.