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Drs. William D. Mathers, Frederick W. Fraunfelder, and Larry F. Rich from OHSU Ophthalmology dept. published a letter to the editor in the current issue of Archives of Ophthalmology stating that their research leads them to believe that contact lens wear is more risky than LASIK.

We here in the optometry community are calling B.S.

Arthur B. Epstein, OD, FAAO wrote the following in his recent e-mail journal Optometric Physician (Volume 6, Number 41, Monday, October 16, 2006):

Despite recent issues [regarding Fusarium], the reality is that contact lenses remain among the safest forms of correction. Soft lenses have been in use for more than 30 years.

Dr. Joseph T. Barr and the staff of Contact Lens Spectrum in their CL Today e-mail newsletter from October 15, 2006 had this to say:

Some quotes from the highly-regarded authors of the aforementioned piece include, “If one assumes,” “estimated,” “extrapolated,” “was not specified,” “calculated,” “laser surgery will become safer,” and “look forward to further investigations of these risks.” It seems much of what is concluded is based on conjecture. They also say, “the risks of refractive surgery vs. contact lenses cannot be compared directly.” Those of us who have tried to do so know this. So why do we keep trying?

I would like to add is that these OHSU doctors should probably do a peer-reviewed study instead of a letter to the editor before scaring the entire nation.

I would encourage everyone to read the entire excerpts from Dr. Barr and Dr. Epstein.

By the way, why are they still doing e-mail newsletters? Haven’t they ever heard of RSS and site feeds? Site feeds can be linked to for reference. E-mail newsletters may be hard for people to find the archives, if archives exist at all.

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I think we all knew that it’s a bad idea to do keratometry and corneal topography after performing gonioscopy, at least if you want accurate, reliable readings. But what if you just did gonio and you now need good K readings? Now what?

A recent study took a look at how long it takes before you can reliably get a consistant K measurement after having done gonio. They found that the autokeratometer doesn’t care if the patient has had gonio or not. The Sim-K from the topographer would like you to wait 20 minutes.

I wish I had thought of this study. I could have gotten my FAAO for this. Pretty sweet and easy. The only thing I would have done different would be to add a control group that didn’t get any gonio, but still repeated AutoK and Topo just to see how much variability exists between measurements.

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