All About Ophthalmology

Answer 1

Most of us have seen the work of ophthalmologists on the street, even if we weren’t aware of it. Ophthalmology is the study and treatment of the human eye, and while glasses and other corrective lenses go back for centuries, it was only with the advent of modern microscopes and lenses that scientists were truly able to understand how the eye works. The human eye is exceedingly complex and quite contradictory in many aspects of its design, and often times ophthalmology is as much as science as it is an art. In the modern world, the need for superb vision in order to allow us to read fine print and use portable electronics means that many of us will need to visit an ophthalmologist at some point in our lives in order to get corrective lenses or surgery.

For most of their history, ophthalmologists were concerned with corrective lenses. While some surgery for cancer or cataracts was possible, the eye is so notoriously fragile that most doctors were forced to allow a patient to be mostly blind as opposed to completely blind, since conducting surgery had a high chance of destroying the eye completely. However, advanced corrective lenses were available as early as the 18th century, the most famous being Benjamin Franklin’s development of bifocal lenses for those who suffered from degraded sight beyond near- and far-sightedness.

Modern advances in ophthalmology now make the proscription and sale of corrective lenses so quick and affordable that it is offered by many big-box retailers and as an outpatient procedure in strip-mall clinics. There are even projects in the third world to provide the locals with corrective lenses whose proscription they can set themselves merely by adjusting and locking the shape of the lens. The major advancement for ophthalmologists now is to extend their science into surgery, eliminating the need for corrective lenses entirely.

Corrective laser surgery enables ophthalmologists to correct problems with the eye that are exceedingly small, since a laser scalpel can make cuts as narrow as a single cell. By using advanced optics and training, it is possible to adjust the size and shape of the cornea to perfection, enabling it to make up for deficiencies in the eye elsewhere. Laser eye surgery is outpatient, although it does blind the patient for days or weeks afterward.