Perspectives of Ophthalmologists on Managing Patient Expectations and Improving Patient Satisfaction

To achieve a high level of patient satisfaction, physicians need to identify and address patients' expectations. However, ophthalmologists' attitudes and behavior with respect to patient expectations and satisfaction are not well understood. Therefore, we under took a study to examine ophthalmologists' attitudes, performance and major determinants of their behavior with respect to managing patient expectations in different settings: public hospitals and private clinics.

The authors refined a previously validated questionnaire to assess ophthalmologists' attitudes and performance with respect to patient expectations and patient satisfaction in public hospitals and private clinics. The authors surveyed ophthalmologists at the Annual Conference of Ocular Microsurgery in Israel.

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Myelinated Retinal Nerve Fibers in Children: OCT Imaging, Refractive Error and Vision

Myelinated retinal nerve fibers (MRNFs) are developmental anomalies of the retina that appear as white to grey-white striated patches with feathery edges, often distributed around or contiguous with the optic disc and surrounding the vascular arcades. Based on a fundus photography study including 5789 patients, Kodama et al. reported that MRNFs occur in approximately 0.57% of the population, most often involving superior and inferior-temporal per papillary areas. No MRNFs were discovered in the macula, and 7.7% were bilateral.

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Ocular Surface Temperature and Tear Film Matrix Metalloproteinase-9 Concentration in Sjögren Syndrome Patients

Sjogren‘s syndrome (SS) is a systemic autoimmune disease characterized by polyglandular tissue destruction mainly affecting the salivar and lacrimal glands. Severe dry eye signs,including low tear volume, tear instability, inflammation of the ocular surface tissues and increased corneal staining are the main ocular manifestations of SS. Different diagnostic techniques have been developed to evaluate and diagnose dry eye syndrome; however, many of these test are invasive.

Infrared thermal images have been used in the last decades for measuring the ocular surface temperature, since its main advantage is being a non-invasive test. Another factor, which could influence the ocular surface temperature, is inflammation. o corroborate this relationship between ocular surface temperature and inflammation would be interested to measure another inflammatory molecules and ocular surface temperature in the same visit. Study was performed only in women patients with the aim to avoid any bias due to gender. Central corneal temperature in Sjögren Syndrome patients was higher than in healthy patients.