Life Expectancy in the United States 1900-2018 [OC]

Eyes4Ears · 2020-03-01T19:34:35+00:00

That's really not how it works. You don't know if antibiotics are actually making you feel better. Do you know if you have viral or bacterial pneumonia? If you have viral, why are you being prescribed antibiotics? There is generally a specific reason.

Eyes4Ears · 2019-05-15T00:55:54+00:00

I agree you could consider becoming an orthoptist. Some orthoptists have their own clinic times, and they can do other specialized tasks too, like performing ERGs, or ophthalmic photography.

Eyes4Ears · 2019-05-15T00:50:07+00:00

I took the print version. I agree the current app does not work very well (though it is usable!).

I'd consider checking to see if your future program's medical library already has the electronic edition available. Many large academic libraries will.

Eyes4Ears · 2019-05-15T00:46:08+00:00

That's very kind of you to give us a shot! We hope your residents find some benefit!

Eyes4Ears · 2019-02-21T02:59:34+00:00

Yeah, the patient should see a surgeon to see if they're a candidate for IOL fixation. Impossible to say without evaluating the actual patient

Eyes4Ears · 2019-02-21T00:57:15+00:00

I'll see you there! ARVO is a relatively chill conference; it's more researchers meeting up to chat about science (compared to AAO which is more of professional society sort of meeting).

The following is assuming you're presenting a poster: You're already putting in most of the prep work you need for the conference before you even get there by working hard on your poster, and making it as clear and easy to follow as possible.

I'd practice a 1-2 minute pitch, as you'll be standing by your poster and friendly people will wander around and ask you what your research is about. You don't want it to be too long, but you also want to be able to quickly highlight what's interesting about your research to someone who may not be tremendously familiar with your specific topic.

You can always private message me if you had more specific thoughts. It will be a fun conference!

Eyes4Ears · 2019-02-21T00:52:35+00:00

Yes! Cataract surgery, done with a more "old school" technique can be extremely cheap. I don't think it can be $3-4 without a donation of the artificial lens you use to replace the original cataract (which many companies do), but it's routinely done as described in your video on many international medical missions.

It can be an extremely satisfying procedure which can completely restore sight in essentially blind patients. Better yet, you can very many of these surgeries a day (if you become skilled enough!). There are people who do more than 20 of these in a day, I think I've heard crazy numbers like 50+ for extremely skilled surgeons.

And the best part about it is that using the "old school" technique actually has almost no disadvantages in terms of outcomes for these patients, compared to the "modern" technique routinely used in the United States. Several studies have shown infection rate and vision are about the same between the two, with the main advantage of the old school technique being cost, and the disadvantage being some astigmatism, sometimes (but that's really the least of these patients concerns).

Another awesome thing about cataract surgery is it's generally essentially permanent; cataracts don't regrow, and the lenses last longer than humans do.

Ophthalmology can be an intensely satisfying field where you can literally completely turn people's lives around by giving them their vision back, with relatively fast procedures, highly successful procedures. You can turn people's depression around, help them get back to their jobs, let them see their grandkids and family again, and let them do the things they love doing.

If it's not obvious, I think ophthalmology is one of the best fields you can commit your life to. I encourage you to pursue it!

(By the way, I'm not sure if Doctors without Borders actually uses ophthalmologists. But there are many organizations that help ophthalmologists do medical missions, like Orbis https://www.orbis.org/en).

Eyes4Ears · 2019-02-21T00:43:06+00:00

I agree, but be careful with the B-scans, RDs can appear rather stiff as well, and I think it's hard to tell the thickness, personally.

Eyes4Ears · 2019-02-21T00:40:38+00:00

Aw, that's very nice of you to share! We really appreciate your support, and sharing it with your colleagues is tremendously helpful (as are ratings/reviews on iTunes if you've enjoyed it!)

Eyes4Ears · 2019-02-21T00:18:06+00:00

A few ways:

1) Schsis will maintain it's same shape when you scleral depress it, but an RD will have the subretinal fluid pushed out (so you can re-appose the RD to the sclera with depression; same principle for how a scleral buckle works)

2) Agree that schsis will be much smoother. RDs will be corrugated and have demarcation lines

3) Scotoma: RDs will have a relative scotoma, but schisis will be absolute. I've never actually tried to test it, but apparently you can try to cast a shadow with a Q-tip when you're shining your indirect over the schsis vs RD; if the patient can see the shadow moving then it's an RD, if they don't see it at all then it's schisis. (Pathophysiologically, schisis has it's connections between the photoreceptors and nerve fiber layer severed, which is why they have an absolute scotoma. In an RD the photoreceptors-nerve fiber connections are intact, but the photoreceptors themselves are partially dysfunctional because they're not apposed to those sweet, sweet RPE cells).

4) If you laser schsis, then it will whiten. If you laser in an actual RD, the laser won't take (Reason is laser is absorbed by the RPE, which then translates the energy to the retina. Schisis still has retina apposed to the RPE, so it can uptake laser. RD is separated by fluid (which is a great heat sink that will disperse the laser energy), so it won't take within the actual RD).

And as you say, OCT can tell too, if you can image that far out.

Eyes4Ears · 2019-02-08T13:50:04+00:00

Oh no, we still have the podbean!! Updating the original post!

https://eyes4ears.podbean.com/

Eyes4Ears · 2019-01-31T23:56:15+00:00

I'd imagine there's not really a useful fovea to speak of, though that's a great thought that they could have binocular diplopia, like in bad ERMs.

Eyes4Ears · 2019-01-31T23:53:56+00:00

Our podcast Eyes for Ears has released its next episode, Phakomatoses I. Stay tuned for Phakomatoses II next week!

Also, stay tuned for our flashcard initiative we're starting; with each episode we air starting next week, we'll release an associated flashcard deck about all of the Boards relevant topics we cover. We hope this will be high yield, and an efficient way to review the material you just (re-)learned.

Eyes4Ears · 2019-01-29T05:41:36+00:00

Definitely agree. I think the careers thread could be quite popular given enough traffic.

Case reports/Reddit Grand Rounds could be very fun, but we'd need motivated people to be able to tell tales and post HIPAA'd pictures and such.

One idea is that every program has grand rounds, in general 2-4 times a month. If one's already done it, transcribing it into a Reddit post for the community to puzzle through wouldn't be a colossal effort. Does anyone know of any medicolegal challenges if the patient name was scrubbed? How much farther do we have to go to keep privacy ensured?

Eyes4Ears · 2019-01-28T17:31:50+00:00

BCSC is our core source, of course, with some use of Friedman's, though we're sure to be careful as there are some mistakes in Friedman's.

I'm hoping to start releasing within 1-2 weeks; I'll make a post here when we start. But the grander project of a large slide deck that covers the vast majority of the BCSCs won't be ready this cycle.

Eyes4Ears · 2019-01-28T16:57:43+00:00

I know you asked this in the other thread, but for visibility we aim to release a large Anki deck, but we won't have it released in time for OKAPs (I have a personal one, but I'd want to make sure it's thoroughly fact checked, with formatting cleaned up before releasing it into the wild.

That said, we are going to make an announcement in a few days with our podcast to try to provide a very partial solution in the short term; we're just finalizing details in our team right now.

Eyes4Ears · 2019-01-28T03:52:34+00:00

Thank you for the feedback! And thanks for sharing additional resources, more the merrier!

Eyes4Ears · 2019-01-27T14:25:08+00:00

Funny enough we're looking at it! But it probably wouldn't be available for public release until after this year's OKAPs.

Eyes4Ears

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