Dexamethasone Intracanalicular Insert for Clinically Significant Aqueous-Deficient Dry Eye: A Randomized Controlled Trial.

Purpose: To evaluate a commercially available dexamethasone intracanalicular insert to treat dry eye.

Design: Single-center, double-masked randomized controlled trial.

Participants: Patients with clinically significant aqueous-deficient dry eye (combined ocular surface staining score, ≥ 3 [0-12]; corneal fluorescein staining score, ≥ 2 [0-6]; and Schirmer's wetting, < 10 mm at 5 minutes in both eyes) with symptoms (dryness, eye discomfort, or visual fatigue, ≥ 30 [0-100]) despite treatment with at least 1 prescription drop and deemed candidates for topical steroid therapy.

Utilizing visual symptoms to distinguish dry eye from glaucoma, cataract, and suspect glaucoma patients: a cross-sectional study.

Background: The diagnosis of dry eye and other common ophthalmological conditions can be supported using patient reported symptoms, which is increasingly useful in contexts such as telemedicine. We aim to ascertain visual symptoms that differentiate dry eye from cataract, glaucoma, or glaucoma suspects.

Methods: Adults with dry eye, glaucoma, cataract, and suspected glaucoma (controls) completed a questionnaire to rate the frequency and severity of 28 visual symptoms.

Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Dry Eye Diagnosis and Care.

Purpose: To investigate health disparities in racial and ethnic minorities with dry eye.

Methods: Medical records were reviewed for demographics, socioeconomic factors, treatments, and objective dry eye parameters. Race/ethnicity was self-reported as delineated by the U.

Community quorum sensing signalling and quenching: microbial granular biofilm assembly.

Background: Recent reports exploring the role of gradients of quorum sensing (QS) signals in functional activated sludge have raised the question of whether shared systems of signalling synthesis and degradation, or quorum quenching (QQ), across the community inform of the means by which QS biology regulate floccular and granular biofilm assembly.

Aims: In this study, we aimed to explore the species origin and interactive role of QS and QQ activities in such highly diverse microbial biofilm communities.

Methods: Here, such aims were addressed systematically by a comprehensive multi-pronged RNA-sequencing, microbiological and analytical chemistry experimental approach, using two related but independently evolved floccular and granular sludge communities.

Minimally invasive functional approach for cholesteatoma surgery.

Objectives/hypothesis: Report the efficacy of a functional minimally invasive approach for cholesteatoma surgery.

Study Design: Retrospective review of surgical cases performed between 1996 and 2008.

Methods: One hundred sixty-nine patient charts were reviewed in which ears with primary cholesteatomas that extended beyond the mesotympanum were operated on with a plan for canal wall up (CWU) mastoidectomy.