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Assisting In Surgical Procedures
Before reading this section I would recommend at least skimming Review of Ocular Diseases so that you are confident with common pathologies before you read about how those pathologies are treated surgically.
General What is a minor procedure?
A minor procedure is a simple procedure that can be perfumed with minimal risk. Many of these procedures are performed in the clinic. Examples of minor procedures are chalazion removal, punctal plug insertion, and foreign body removal.
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Medical Ethics, Legal, and Regulatory Issues
Third-Party Coding Current procedural terminology (CPT) pronounced “captain” is how healthcare providers communicated their services to insurance companies. When collecting histories ask the eight questions required by CPT.
The International Classification of Diseases (ICD) are diagnosis codes that allow all healthcare providers to communicate with each other.
Government and Institutional Rules and Regulations The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) – This act protects patients personal health information.
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Visual Assessment
Visual Acuity Visual acuity is tested by asking the patient to read letters of different sizes. Visual acuity is broken into two pieces a numerator, the top number, and the denominator, the bottom number.
The numerator represents the test distance.
The denominator is the number that represents what the patient can see.
For example:
20⁄20 Means that at 20 feet the patient can see what a normal eye can see at 20 feet.
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Refractometry
First I highly recommend that you go through this tutorial. This is the best resource I have found on refraction. After you have gone through the plus and minus cylinder refraction tutorials read the rest of this post.
Refractive Errors General Eye Shapes Emmetropia: This is a normal eye “well-proportioned”
Myopia: This is nearsightedness. This is an eye that can see near objects well, but can’t see distant objects well.
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Keratometry
Keratometry is the measure of the curvature of the cornea.
Corneal Curvature The cornea has the most refractive power. Even for then the lens. The average thickness of the cornea is 0.5 mm(100 um). Corneal curvature is measured in millimeters/diopter.
With the rule vs against the rule. With-the-rule astigmatism means that the strongest axis is the vertical axis (90 degrees) in plus cylinder which is the same as 180 degrees minus cylinder.
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Lensometry
Before reading this section please brush up on spectacle skills to make sure that you know how to transpose.
Automated Lensometry The automated lensometer is a lensometer that does all of the work for you. Just line of the lens then the machines beeps and spits out the reading. As long as you have selected the correct cylinder type you can’t really go wrong.
Advantages to using the automated lensometer
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Tonometry
Goldmann Applanation Tonometer The word applanate means to flatten. The purpose of applanation tonometry is to find ocular pressure. This follows the formaula Pressure = Force/Area. The applanation tonometer flattens a known area (3.06mm) with a given force to give pressure.
Clean The Goldmann Applanation Tonometer may be cleaned by wiping with soap and water. While cleaning don’t bend the arm of the tonometer and make sure that the readings on the tonometer head are set to zero and level when finished.
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Microbiology
Office Antisepsis Know the difference between these three words:
Disinfection – inhibition of microorganisms Sterilization – destruction of microorganisms Sanitation – clean enough to be healthy Disinfection involves the destruction and inhibition of microorganisms on any surface. Germicides disinfect non-living surfaces, such as the counter tops in the clinic. Antiseptics disinfect living surfaces, such as you hands.
I had a hard time trying to remember the difference between germicides and antiseptics.
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Pupillary Assessment
Measure This section of the test is going to test your knowledge of pupil size. Two terms to know here are miotic and mydriatic.
Miotic pupils are smaller than 2mm.
Mydriatic is a pupil size larger than 6mm.
Memorization Trick: Miotic is small like a tick. Mydriatic is big and dramatic. Compare Anisocoria is when the pupils are unequal sizes. This may happen after a traumatic incident.
Know the difference between direct pupillary response and consensual pupillary response.
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Ocular Motility
Introduction to muscles and muscle movements There are six muscles of the eye.
Four of them are rectus muscles, meaning that they yank the eye straight back toward the origin of the muscle. These four muscles are either medial, near the nose, lateral, near the temple, superior, above the eye, inferior, below the eye.
The other two muscles are oblique muscles which means that they pull the eye at an angle causing a slight toric motion.