Early start to the morning (0600!) as I gave a talk to a group of Israeli Ophthalmologists on “Surgical Temporary Ocular Discomfort Syndrome” or STODS at the Dry Eye Clinic of Israel.
Thankyou so much to Dr Michael Mimouni, President of the Israeli Cornea Society, in inviting me to give this talk.
Surgical Temporary Ocular Discomfort Syndrome, or STODS, describes the transient irritation experienced by the patient as part of the normal process of healing after any surgical intervention on the eye.
It should not be confused with “dry eye syndrome”, although the sensation of dry eyes can be part of the post-operative course. The pathophysiology and biomarkers are a fascinating area of study and are found to be quite distinct.
It is also not a unique experience, but quite commonly temporarily experienced by many patients after their eye surgery of any type. It usually takes a few weeks to a few months to returns back to normal as the eye heals.
Dr Suphi Taneri and Dr Teresa Tsai are leading the way with their research into this distinct entity which is likely to have an enormous influence on the way we think about the dry eye symptoms that patients can get after eye surgeries. This is a significant paradigm shift in the way we think about this entity and will have an impact on the way we pre-operatively detect and post-operatively manage these experiences to have positive outcomes for patients.
For those of you interested in reading more about this, you can find more details in this paper here:
Tsai T, Alwees M, Rost A, Theile J, Dick HB, Joachim SC, Taneri S. Changes of Subjective Symptoms and Tear Film Biomarkers following Femto-LASIK. Int J Mol Sci. 2022 Jul 6;23(14):7512. doi: 10.3390/ijms23147512. PMID: 35886858; PMCID: PMC9320097.
I am really looking forward to seeing what this research group finds – and how this helps us help our patients.
You can find out more about the Israeli Dry Eye Clinic here: https://dryeye.co.il.
