Purpose: To evaluate the symptoms, etiology and treatment of patient dissatisfaction after extended depth-of-focus (EDOF) intraocular lens (IOL) implantation.
Setting: University Eye Clinic, Maastricht University Medical Center, the Netherlands.
Design: Retrospective case series.
Introduction: To investigate 5-year outcomes on intraocular pressure (IOP) and safety of micropulse transscleral cyclophotocoagulation (TSCPC) in patients with glaucoma.
Methods: Patients with mild to advanced glaucoma who underwent a standardized micropulse TSCPC procedure at the University Eye Clinic Maastricht from November 2016 to February 2019 were included.
Results: A total of 165 eyes were included, with outcomes for 112 eyes available after 5-year follow-up.
Purpose: Ocular cysticercosis, caused by larvae, presents significant public health challenges, especially in regions with poor sanitation. Traditional imaging techniques often fail to detect anterior segment cysticercosis accurately, necessitating the exploration of more advanced diagnostic modalities like Ultrasound Biomicroscopy (UBM).
Patients And Methods: A retrospective observational analysis was conducted on 18 eyes from 14 patients with cysticercosis involving the anterior segment.
Background: Epidemiological and toxicological studies indicate that increased exposure to air pollutants can lead to neurodegenerative diseases. To further confirm this relationship, we evaluated the association between exposure to ambient air pollutants and corneal nerve measures as a surrogate for neurodegeneration, using corneal confocal microscopy.
Methods: We used population-based observational cross-sectional data from The Maastricht Study including N = 3635 participants (mean age 59.
Front Ophthalmol (Lausanne)
June 2024
Fundus cameras are widely used by ophthalmologists for monitoring and diagnosing retinal pathologies. Unfortunately, no optical system is perfect, and the visibility of retinal images can be greatly degraded due to the presence of problematic illumination, intraocular scattering, or blurriness caused by sudden movements. To improve image quality, different retinal image restoration/enhancement techniques have been developed, which play an important role in improving the performance of various clinical and computer-assisted applications.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAm J Ophthalmol Case Rep
September 2024
Purpose: We describe a patient after customized crosslinking (CXL) for progressive keratoconus who developed corneal edema with spontaneous resolution.
Observations: A 24-year-old male with progressive keratoconus of the left eye underwent a customized CXL procedure with a total energy of 10 J/cm for 16.4 minutes.
While physical activity (PA) is understood to promote vascular health, little is known about whether the daily and weekly patterns of PA accumulation associate with vascular health. Accelerometer-derived (activPAL3) 6- or 7-day stepping was analyzed for 6430 participants in The Maastricht Study (50.4% women; 22.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNeurodegenerative disorders are characterized by the progressive loss of structure and function of neurons, often including the death of the neuron. Previously, we reported that, by removing the cell death stimulus, dying/injured neurons could survive and recover from the process of regulated cell death, even if the cells already displayed various signs of cellular damage. Now we investigated the role of mitochondrial dynamics (fission/fusion, biogenesis, mitophagy) in both degeneration and in recovery of neuronal cells.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Cerebral microvascular dysfunction may contribute to depression via disruption of brain structures involved in mood regulation, but evidence is limited. We investigated the association of retinal microvascular function, a proxy for microvascular function in the brain, with incidence and trajectories of clinically relevant depressive symptoms.
Methods: Longitudinal data are from The Maastricht Study of 5952 participants (59.
Background: Retinal ganglion cell (RGC) degeneration and death cause vision loss in patients with glaucoma. Regulated cell death, once initiated, is generally considered to be an irreversible process. Recently, we showed that, by timely removing the cell death stimulus, stressed neuronal PC12 cells can recover from phosphatidylserine (PS) exposure, nuclear shrinkage, DNA damage, mitochondrial fragmentation, mitochondrial membrane potential loss, and retraction of neurites, all hallmarks of an activated cell death program.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Microvascular dysfunction is involved in the development of various cerebral disorders. It may contribute to these disorders by disrupting white matter tracts and altering brain connectivity, but evidence is scarce. We investigated the association between multiple biomarkers of microvascular function and whole-brain white matter connectivity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: Keratoconus is characterized by the progressive thinning of the cornea, which leads to a cone-like appearance of the eye over time. Although conventionally defined as a noninflammatory condition, a number of recent studies have associated keratoconus (KC) with allergic conjunctivitis (AC) based on clinical parameters. This study aimed to consolidate this association by performing a proteomic analysis of tear fluid from patients with keratoconus and/or allergic conjunctivitis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: To compare the prediction accuracy of toric intraocular lens calculations using estimated vs measured posterior corneal astigmatism (PCA).
Design: Retrospective case series.
Methods: A total of 110 eyes of 110 patients with uncomplicated toric intraocular lens implantation were included in this study.
Background: Keratoconus remains difficult to diagnose, especially in the early stages. It is a progressive disorder of the cornea that starts at a young age. Diagnosis is based on clinical examination and corneal imaging; though in the early stages, when there are no clinical signs, diagnosis depends on the interpretation of corneal imaging (e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThyroid eye disease (TED) is an autoimmune orbital inflammatory disease which ranges from mild to severe. Tissue remodeling, fibrosis and fat proliferation cause changes in the orbital tissues which can affect esthetics and visual function. In its severe form, it is sight threatening, debilitating, and disfiguring and may lead to social stigma, the embarrassment about which has an impact on the quality of life of those affected and the family members.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: To adapt the Quality of Vision Questionnaire (QoV) for measuring negative dysphotopsia and to validate the original and modified versions in the Dutch population.
Methods: The QoV was translated into Dutch according to standardized methodology. Negative dysphotopsia items were constructed based on focus group interviews, literature review and clinical data.
Alzheimers Dement
January 2024
Introduction: The retina may provide non-invasive, scalable biomarkers for monitoring cerebral neurodegeneration.
Methods: We used cross-sectional data from The Maastricht study (n = 3436; mean age 59.3 years; 48% men; and 21% with type 2 diabetes [the latter oversampled by design]).
Diabetologia
November 2023
Aims/hypothesis: To assess the associations between glucose metabolism status and a range of continuous measures of glycaemia with corneal nerve fibre measures, as assessed using corneal confocal microscopy.
Methods: We used population-based observational cross-sectional data from the Maastricht Study of N=3471 participants (mean age 59.4 years, 48.
Introduction: Our main objective was to investigate whether retinal neurodegeneration, estimated from lower thickness of inner retinal layers, was associated with incident all-cause dementia and Alzheimer's disease (AD).
Methods: We performed an individual participant data meta-analysis using unpublished data from four prospective cohort studies with a total of 69,955 participants (n = 1087 cases of incident all-cause dementia; n = 520 cases incident AD; follow-up time median [interquartile range] 11.3 [8.
Background: Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common cause of dementia, and due to increasing life expectancy the number of patients is expected to grow. The diagnosis of AD involves the use of biomarkers determined by an amyloid PET scan or cerebrospinal fluid analyses that are either invasive or expensive, and not available in each hospital, thus limiting their usage as a front-line screener. The TearAD study aims to use tear fluid as a potential source for AD biomarkers.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLoss of neurons in chronic neurodegenerative diseases may occur over a period of many years. Once initiated, neuronal cell death is accompanied by distinct phenotypic changes including cell shrinkage, neurite retraction, mitochondrial fragmentation, nuclear condensation, membrane blebbing and phosphatidylserine (PS) exposure at the plasma membrane. It is still poorly understood which events mark the point of no return for dying neurons.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn this research, we studied the duality between cataractous retinal image dehazing and image denoising and proposed that the dehazing task for cataractous retinal images can be achieved with the combination of image denoising and sigmoid function. To do so, we introduce the double-pass fundus reflection model in the YPbPr color space and developed a multilevel stimulated denoising strategy termed MUTE. The transmission matrix of the cataract layer is expressed as the superposition of denoised raw images of different levels weighted by pixel-wise sigmoid functions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBMC Ophthalmol
May 2023
Background: Keratoconus is a degenerative disorder of the cornea leading to a protrusion and thinning with loss of visual acuity. The only treatment to halt the progression is corneal crosslinking (CXL), which uses riboflavin and UV-A light to stiffen the cornea. Recent ultra-structural examinations show that the disease is regional and does not affect the entire cornea.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: If retinal indices of neurodegeneration are to be biomarkers for the monitoring of cerebral neurodegeneration, it is important to establish whether potentially modifiable risk factors for dementia are associated with retinal neurodegenerative changes.
Objective: To study associations of dementia risk factors with retinal sensitivity, an index of retinal neural function, and retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL) thickness, an index of retinal neural structure.
Methods: We used cross-sectional data from The Maastricht Study (up to 5,666 participants, 50.