Reinhard ocular

Atopic dermatitis (AD) is a chronic recurrent inflammatory skin disease with a bipolar age distribution in childhood, adolescence and middle adulthood. Up to 50% of AD patients show ocular involvement, which can be potentially sight threatening. Clinically, the majority of cases present with atopic blepharo(kerato)conjunctivitis or atopic keratoconjunctivitis (AKC); other clinical variants from this group of inflammatory ocular surface diseases are keratoconjunctivitis vernalis in childhood and adolescence and allergic conjunctivitis...

Millions of people require custom ocular prostheses due to eye loss or congenital defects. The current fully manual manufacturing processes used by highly skilled ocularists are time-consuming with varying quality. Additive manufacturing technology has the potential to simplify the manufacture of ocular prosthetics, but existing approaches just replace to various degrees craftsmanship by manual digital design and still require substantial expertise and time. Here we present an automatic digital end-to-end process for producing custom ocular prostheses that uses image data from an anterior segment optical coherence tomography device and considers both shape and appearance...

The aim of global ophthalmology is to maximize vision, ocular health and functional ability, thereby contributing to overall health and well-being, social inclusion and quality of life of every individual worldwide. Currently, an estimated 1.1 billion people live with visual impairment, 90% of which can be prevented or cured through largely cost-effective interventions. At the same time, 90% of people affected live in regions with insufficient eye health coverage. This challenge drove the World Health Organization (WHO) and a group of nongovernmental organizations to launch "VISION 2020: the Right to Sight", a global campaign which recently concluded after 20 years...

Infections with Scedosporium spp. are emerging in the past two decades and are associated with a high mortality rate. Microbiological detection can be associated with either a colonization or infection. Evolution from colonization into infection is difficult to predict and clinical management upon microbiological detection is complex. Microbiological samples from 2015 to 2021 were retrospectively analyzed in a single tertiary care centre. Classification into colonization or infection was performed upon first microbiological detection...

Organ culture storage techniques for corneoscleral limbal (CSL) tissue have improved the quality of corneas for transplantation and allow for longer storage times. Cultured limbal tissue has been used for stem cell transplantation to treat limbal stem cell deficiency (LSCD) as well as for research purposes to assess homeostasis mechanisms in the limbal stem cell niche. However, the effects of organ culture storage conditions on the quality of limbal niche components are less well described. Therefore, in this study, the morphological and immunohistochemical characteristics of organ-cultured limbal tissue are investigated and compared to fresh limbal tissues by means of light and electron microscopy...

PURPOSE: To evaluate the efficacy of XEN® -45 gel stent ab interno implantation for medically uncontrolled uveitic glaucoma. METHODS: Retrospective analysis of 25 eyes receiving XEN® gel stent for medically uncontrolled uveitic glaucoma from February 2019 to February 2023 with recording of intraocular pressure (IOP) values, ocular hypotensive medication, requirement for revision or secondary surgery and complications. Prerequisites for XEN® implantation were a clear cornea, an open iridocorneal angle and an unscarred, mobile conjunctiva at the implantation site...

PURPOSE: Caruncle dysgeneses are extremely rare and must be differentiated from caruncular and conjunctival tumors. Very few case reports with histopathological descriptions exist. In this case series, four patients with five caruncle dysgeneses, two with histopathological findings, are characterised. OBSERVATIONS: Patient 1, a 26-year-old woman, presented with a conjunctival change at the left lower eyelid she had first noticed seven months earlier. She reported foreign body sensation and itching...

PURPOSE: To address the paucity of data in patients with historically poor outcomes, we conducted the single-arm phase IIIb CheckMate 401 study to evaluate the safety and efficacy of nivolumab plus ipilimumab followed by nivolumab monotherapy in clinically diverse patient populations with advanced melanoma. METHODS: Treatment-naive patients with unresectable stage III-IV melanoma received nivolumab 1 mg/kg plus ipilimumab 3 mg/kg once every 3 weeks (four doses) followed by nivolumab 3 mg/kg (240 mg following a protocol amendment) once every 2 weeks for ≤24 months...

PURPOSE: To propose additional items for established dry eye disease (DED) instruments that cover blepharitis-specific signs and symptoms and to determine the association between the clinical findings and subjective complaints. METHODS: Thirty-one patients with blepharitis and DED were prospectively included in the pretest period for selecting suitable questions. In the main phase of the study, the selected questions were then tested on 68 patients with blepharitis and DED and 20 controls without blepharitis or DED...

The porcine ocular surface is used as a model of the human ocular surface; however, a detailed characterization of the porcine ocular surface has not been documented. This is due, in part, to the scarcity of antibodies produced specifically against the porcine ocular surface cell types or structures. We performed a histological and immunohistochemical investigation on frozen and formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded ocular surface tissue from domestic pigs using a panel of 41 different antibodies related to epithelial progenitor/differentiation phenotypes, extracellular matrix and associated molecules, and various niche cell types...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Serum eye drops (SEDs) are used to treat ocular surface disease (OSD) and to promote ocular surface renewal. However, their use and production are not standardized, and several new forms of human eye drops have been developed. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The International Society for Blood Transfusion Working Party (ISBT WP) for Cellular Therapies held a workshop to review the current types of eye drops of human origin (EDHO) status and provide guidance...

Belantamab mafodotin is a relatively new drug used in the treatment of relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma. Clinical studies have shown promising responses, but ocular toxicity remains a major challenge with dose reduction or therapy discontinuation being the only available treatment option. We report a clinical case of a patient with severe keratopathy under therapy with belantamab. The use of rigid gas-permeable corneal contact lenses led to a major visual improvement and enabled therapy continuation at full dose over several months...

This study characterizes the transcriptional profile and the cellular tumor microenvironment of conjunctival extranodal marginal zone lymphoma (EMZL) and identifies prognostically relevant biomarkers. Ten formalin-fixed and paraffin-embedded conjunctival EMZL and eight healthy conjunctival specimens were analyzed by Massive Analysis of cDNA Ends (MACE) RNA sequencing. The 3417 upregulated genes in conjunctival EMZL were involved in processes such as B cell proliferation and Rac protein signaling, whereas the 1188 downregulated genes contributed most significantly to oxidative phosphorylation and UV protection...

For light propagation in a layered refractive index profile, critical conditions occur when the wave vector perpendicular to the layering becomes zero. Such conditions can occur in a total reflection geometry. Conventional transfer matrix methods become singular, and geometrical optics concepts break down at critical conditions. We introduce two new, to the best of our knowledge, basis systems using virtual linear functions that obey the Helmholtz equation and turn to linear functions required for critical conditions...

BACKGROUND: Gene expression analysis using RNA sequencing has helped to improve the understanding of many diseases. Databases, such as the Gene Expression Omnibus database of the National Center for Biotechnology Information provide RNA sequencing raw data from various diseased tissue types but their analysis requires advanced bioinformatics skills. Therefore, specific ocular databases provide the transcriptional profiles of different ocular tissues and in addition enable intuitive web-based data analysis...

BACKGROUND: Millions of people in Germany wear contact lenses every day. Deficient contactlens hygiene can lead to corneal infection. Contact-lens-associated keratitis usually has a highly acute presentation and can cause long-term visual loss. METHODS: This review is based on pertinent publications retrieved by a selective search in PubMed, as well as on relevant meta-analyses, Cochrane reviews, and reports by national and international health care authorities...

PURPOSE: To assess the time course of secondary visual axis opacification (VAO) leading to additional surgery after primary intraocular lens (IOL) implantation in children and to describe further surgical outcomes. Comparison of lens types. DESIGN: Single-center, retrospective analysis of children aged 1 to 14 years who underwent cataract surgery with primary IOL implantation. The surgical technique was either in-bag IOL placement with primary posterior capsulotomy and anterior vitrectomy or bag-in-lens IOL placement...

The applications of deep sequencing technologies in life science research and clinical diagnostics have increased rapidly over the last decade. Although fast algorithms for data processing exist, intuitive, portable solutions for data analysis are still rare. For this purpose, we developed a web-based transcriptome database, which provides a platform-independent, intuitive solution to easily explore and compare ocular gene expression of 100 diseased and healthy human tissue samples from 15 different tissue types collected at the Eye Center of the University of Freiburg...

Objective: In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, strict hygiene and containment measures have been instituted in the clinical ophthalmological examination to prevent virus transmission. The aim of this study is to assess the effects of these protective measures on the quality of the examination with an emphasis on gender-specific differences. Methods and analysis: An online survey was sent to ophthalmologists in 10 countries. The collected data included demographics, place of work, current professional status, COVID-19 protective measures and their impact on the quality of the examination...

BACKGROUND: Imaging mass cytometry (IMC) combines the principles of flow cytometry and mass spectrometry (MS) with laser scanning spatial resolution and offers unique advantages for the analysis of tissue samples in unprecedented detail. In contrast to conventional immunohistochemistry, which is limited in its application by the number of possible fluorochrome combinations, IMC uses isoptope-coupled antibodies that allow multiplex analysis of up to 40 markers in the same tissue section simultaneously...