Monday, August 21, 2006

Another Ophthalmological Condition

This is a 30 year old female who has noticed these "yellow spots" on her eyes for about a year. There is no pain or other complaint. She just wants to know what they are. Anyone care to have a go at it?

posted by Clay @ 8/21/2006 09:58:00 PM   7 comments

7 Comments:

At 10:06 PM, Blogger joe said...

I vote for subscleral fat deposits. Initially I would think pterygium, but she is not too old and although the location is right it looks
fatty.

Even though I know 30 somethings that have pterygium.

 
At 9:10 AM, Blogger Clay said...

I thought the bossman would jump in with pterygium but you saved yourself. It is a pinguecula.

 
At 8:56 PM, Blogger Clay said...

Joe and I had a conversation about pterygia and pingueculae. He mentioned the pterygium entry in Wikipedia which explains why they tend to develop on the nasal aspect of the eye. Here is the excerpt:

When associated with the conjunctiva, a pterygium commonly grows from the nasal side of the sclera. It is caused principally by ultraviolet-light exposure (e.g. sunshine). It appears predominantly on the nasal side because the cornea acts as a lens for sunlight on the medial/nasal side but not on the lateral/temporal side, owing to the shadow cast by the nose.


We had a hard time making that work, but since we are admittedly not experts in physics or opthamolgy, I asked our opthamologist friend. The short version of his response was that the Wikipedia entry must have been written by an optometrist because there is no medical science in that explanation. I don't have the same bias against optometry that he does so I will refrain from commenting further about who might have written it. I will however invite anyone who is interested to give further discourse on this subject.

 
At 5:39 AM, Blogger joe said...

Thanks for the follow up, but if you continue with eye related subjects you need to add another "h" to ophthalmology.

 
At 9:12 AM, Blogger Clay said...

You got me. I corrected the heading. I missed two letters the last time I spelled it in the comments.

 
At 4:08 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

So what is the final verdict? pinguecula?

 
At 10:04 PM, Blogger Clay said...

Yes, pinguecula was the verdict that we finally agreed upon in the off-line smackdown.

 

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