A new white-colored, painless bump appears on your eyelid margin.  You've rubbed at it, and now there are more.  What could it be?

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After a few years ruled by thick zyl frames in black and tortoise, eyewear is poised for a complete 180 -- lightweight metals and barely there plastics are dominating the marketplace.  And the color palate of choice? Think the soft pastels that received dual honors as Pantone's Color of the Year 2016: a blushy dust pink called Rose Quartz and an icy grey-blue called Serenity.

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MODO Eyewear's Paper Thin frame line is composed of ultra-lightweight titanium.

MODO Eyewear 4078

Celebrity favorite Oliver Peoples Annetta frame via

Olivia Palermo's latest collab with Westward Leaning is the Rose Gold Collection, featuring blush tinted lenses in a range of frame styles.  Our favorite is a combo made in Pantone heaven, the Flower 14 (below).

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There are a few things in life that are inevitable.  As a colleague of mine likes to phrase it, "If you live long enough, you will get a cataract."  But developing cataracts is not a diagnosis of doom and gloom.  Today's cataract surgery is as much a refractive procedure to bring you back to clear vision (maybe even without glasses!) as it is a medical one.  Some of my patients are actively hoping for that cataract diagnosis from year to year so we can correct their high nearsightedness or reduce their dependence on reading glasses.  And cataract surgery itself has changed so much, even in the last decade.  Now there are ways to reduce healing time, and achieve more precise vision refinement. There are implants that can correct even high amounts of astigmatism, and that can help you read again free from those OTC readers.  If you are about to undergo cataract surgery, here are the two questions you need to ask yourself to prepare for the best procedure for your needs:

In fall 2015 Alcon very quietly discontinued their preservative free saline solution for contact lens rinsing and filling, the well-regarded Unisol 4.  Most local pharmacies and box stores are now out of the product, and patients that have used the product loyally for years are scrambling for a replacement.  If you don't think the panic is real, just check out the price gauging on ebay -- $50 for a 3 pack that would have run you under $10 just a few months ago.  I've spoken with a rep from Alcon, and there was no official statement released as to why the product was discontinued, and there is no plan for reinstating the product in future.  If you are in need of preservative free saline, here are a few doctor recommended solutions that can take it's place.

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I was recently asked what was my favorite thing about eyewear.  Picture this: there was a moment somewhere in time that a great hero in the optical world decided he or she would make that little wire rimmed pair of glasses they had to wear look different.  They decided to change up the design of their glasses and make them more unique, more personal, more artistic.  In that moment, the idea that has blurred the line of glasses as a medical device versus a fashion accessory was born.  Braces, casts -- other medical devices never made it to true fashion status like eyewear, and our international obsession with glasses as wearable art is continuing to deliver fashion moments that make us perfectly content to be a little imperfect in eyesight and thus needing a new pair, of course.

The Optiprism sunglasses by Max Mara (Safilo) via

Celebrating this glorious marriage of function and fashion in ophthalmics, this year's collaboration between fashion house Max Mara and artist Maya Hayuk was a perfect melding of the minds.  The New York based artist was originally tasked with designing art to be featured on the Italian fashion brand's sunglass packaging, but the colorful patterns she created quickly became inspiration for the sunglasses themselves.  Her work is a reimagination how prisms reflect and bend light (the very concept behind how glasses work). The prismatic pops of color and shapes now appear on a 200 piece limited edition collection, signed by the artist herself!

"Optiprism" by Maya Hayuk via

Originally Hayuk's art was meant for the glasses packaging, but the print inspired Max Mara designers so much they have featured it in a limited edition run of sunglasses as well. via

The artist, Maya Hayuk standing in front of her artwork, "Optiprism" and wearing the Max Mara sunglasses she inspired.  via

As a primary care optometrist, the majority of my patients every day are scheduled for routine comprehensive exams.  It's time to update their glasses and contact lens prescriptions; no significant vision or pain complaints. I'm a strong believer that at every routine exam we should also do an ocular health assessment, even when the patient has no complaints about their eyes or vision. Unfortunately the eye is a body part that isn't very good at telling us when something is wrong.  Most blinding conditions of the eye, and most systemic conditions that steal sight have absolutely no symptoms -- no pain, no vision changes -- until you are permanently blind.  I know you and I wouldn't want to wait that long to find them.  I want to share this real case from my practice as a great example about why routine health care should always include dilation and/or retinal imaging.  This patient and his team of medical doctors are very happy that he didn't skip the dilation or imaging this year.

The Case:
47 year old white male presents for routine eye exam with no vision complaints.  Only known medical condition is hyperthyroidism, for which he takes levoxyl.  He had LASIK a few years ago and is 20/20 in both eyes without any glasses prescription required.  All ocular health is normal, even his eye pressure (11 and 10 mmHg in right and left eye respectively).  But then we look at his retinal imaging and we see this:

Right Eye:


Left Eye:


To the untrained eye, the multiple hemorrhages in these photographs might be hard to spot.  The photos below have been color and brightness enhanced to better visualize the bleeding going on in the retina:

Right Eye:


Left Eye:


Both eyes have multiple intraretinal hemorrhages scattered throughout.  The most obvious can be seen inferiorly on the right eye photograph -- they look like red blotches in the retina.  Whenever we find bleeding in the eye, the usual culprit is a systemic vascular condition.  High blood pressure and diabetes are two common systemic conditions that cause retinal hemorrhages.  But this patient had never been diagnosed with any vascular condition, and he saw his primary care doctor regularly. Blood work was ordered and the results came back with elevated white blood cell count.  Further testing confirmed the diagnosis: chronic myeloid leukemia.

Chronic myeloid leukemia (or CML) is a cancer of the bone marrow, disrupting the body's ability to make platelets, red blood cells, and white blood cells.  In the chronic stage of this cancer, most patients are completely asymptomatic.  They might feel fatigue or joint pain, but our patient had neither complaint.  Luckily with treatment the chance for survival with CML is very good.  A 2011 study of Gleevic found a survival rate of  95.2% of treated patients after 8 years.  With early intervention, the treatment has even better chances for success.  Interestingly, only 5-10% of patients with CML present with ophthalmic signs or symptoms at initial diagnosis, but those that do have retinal hemorrhaging or other associates retinal findings like optic nerve edema have a lower 5 year survival rate:  21.4% compared to 45.7% of those without.   That's why finding signs like retinal bleeds and getting the proper blood work is so essential  -- if the signs are there but aren't caught, the patient has a much lower chance of survival.  But if these signs are found during routine eye exams, the patient can get treatment much faster and earlier in the disease process, and improve their chance for survival!

This case is a great story about how routine health care is the best way to protect your health. Whenever you are tempted to blow off your annual exam, or skip that dilation because it's not convenient, think about that possibility that today's eye exam could save your life.

Many people remember the first time contact lenses hit the mainstream in 1971.  But the idea for contact lenses is much, much older.  That unparalleled visionary, Leonardo Di Vinci, drew a design for contact lenses back in 1508, which looked a lot more like a helmet than what we've come to know and love today.  The lenses from the 40s described in the video below involved a rather invasive on-eye mold, and the lenses themselves were not for the light of pocket, coming in at over $4000 when adjusted for inflation.  Looking back at images like this, less than a century old, just shows you the remarkable path of how far we've come in the world of ophthalmics!