Dry Eye Diseases and Ocular Surgery: Practical Guidelines for Canadian Eye Care Practitioners

In 2014, the Canadian Dry Eye Disease Consensus Panel published Guidelines for screening, diagnosis and management of dry eye diseases (DED). These did not address the implications of DED for individuals who are being considered for or have recently undergone ocular surgery. DED is common in certain surgical cohorts, and the perisurgical setting poses specific challenges, both because surgery can complicate preexisting DED and because symptomatic and non-symptomatic DED place the patient at risk of poor surgical outcomes. The Consensus Panel has developed this Addendum to the 2014 Guidelines to offer guidance on DED care before and after ocular surgery

Spectrochemical analysis in blood plasma combined with subsequent chemometrics for fibromyalgia detection

Fibromyalgia is a rheumatologic condition characterized by multiple and chronic body pain, and other typical symptoms such as intense fatigue, anxiety and depression. It is a very complex disease where treatment is often made by non-medicated alternatives in order to alleviate symptoms and improve the patient’s quality of life. Herein, we propose a method to detect patients with fibromyalgia (n = 252, 126 controls and 126 patients with fibromyalgia) through the analysis of their blood plasma using attenuated total reflection Fourier-transform infrared (ATR-FTIR) spectroscopy in conjunction with chemometric techniques, hence, providing a low-cost, fast and accurate diagnostic approach. Different chemometric algorithms were tested to classify the spectral data; genetic algorithm with linear discriminant analysis (GA-LDA) achieved the best diagnostic results with a sensitivity of 89.5% in an external test set. The GA-LDA model identified 24 spectral wavenumbers responsible for class separation; amongst these, the Amide II (1,545 cm−1) and proteins (1,425 cm−1) were identified to be discriminant features. These results reinforce the potential of ATR-FTIR spectroscopy with multivariate analysis as a new tool to screen and detect patients with fibromyalgia in a fast, low-cost, non-destructive and minimally invasive fashion

Lignes directrices pratiques pour les professionnels canadiens des soins oculovisuels concernant la sécheresse oculaire et la chirurgie de l’œil

En 2014, le Groupe de consensus canadien sur la sécheresse oculaire a publié un document intitulé Dépistage, diagnostic et prise en charge de la sécher-esse oculaire : guide pratique à l’intention des optométristes canadiens. Ce guide pratique ne traitait pas des répercussions de la sécheresse oculaire chez les personnes en voie de subir une intervention chirurgicale de l’œil ou ayant récemment subi ce genre d’intervention. La sécheresse oculaire est courante dans certaines cohortes ayant subi une intervention chirurgicale, et le contexte périopératoire pose des problèmes précis; d’une part parce qu’une intervention chirurgicale peut compliquer une sécheresse oculaire préexistante et, d’autre part, parce la sécheresse oculaire symptomatique et asymptomatique expose le patient au risque d’obtenir des résultats chirur-gicaux médiocres. Le groupe de consensus a élaboré cet addenda au guide pratique de 2014 pour offrir des conseils sur les soins relatifs à la sécheresse oculaire avant et après une intervention chirurgicale aux yeux