Short-term Clinical Outcomes of Small Incision Lenticule Extraction for Correction of Myopia Patients with Corneal Opacity

PURPOSE: To evaluate the clinical outcomes of small incision lenticule extraction (SMILE) for the treatment of myopia with corneal opacity. METHODS: Thirteen eyes of 13 patients with corneal opacities who underwent SMILE were retrospectively studied. Uncorrected distance visual acuity, spherical equivalence, efficacy index, and safety index were noted at 3 months after the procedure. The density and area of the corneal opacities were measured and compared preoperatively and 3 months postoperatively. RESULTS: All eyes had preoperative corneal opacities within the lenticule formation areas. The mean area and density of corneal opacities were 0.72 ± 0.33 mm2 and 52.46 ± 15.74, respectively. All procedures were uneventful and no intraoperative complications were observed. At 3 months after the procedure, the efficacy and safety indices were 1.01 ± 0.15, and 1.05 ± 0.10, respectively, and the mean densities and areas of corneal opacities were 46.85 ± 14.56 (p = 0.038) and 0.70 ± 0.36 mm2 (p = 0.776), respectively. CONCLUSIONS: The SMILE procedure was effective and safe for the correction of myopic patients with corneal opacities.

A prospective study of examining physiological signals for estimating occurrence of nocturnal enuresis.

The nocturnal enuresis is challenging due to the increased social activities of the children. This disorder significantly bothers both the children and their parents in psychological, behavioral, social, and financial manners. However, the primary treatments have limitations and further are not able to completely cure the disorder. In order to reduce pain and burdens of patients and their parents, it is important to accurately estimate when the enuretic incident occurs in advance. For the estimation, we have comprehensively investigated various studies of the nocturnal enuresis in the diverse fields. Through the investigations, we have summarized four hypotheses of the physiological signals related to the enuretic moment. In order to conquer the nocturnal enuresis, we design a preliminary framework sensing and investigating the physiological signals with the sensors. Our synthesized approach to understand and estimate the moments of the enuretic incidents can establish a foothold to complete the promising prediction system.

Continuous bladder volume monitoring system for wearable applications.

In this research, we propose a bladder volume monitoring system that can be effectively applied for various voiding dysfunctions. Whereas conventional systems lack consecutive measurements, the proposed system can continuously monitor a user's status even during unconscious sleep. For the convenience, we design a simple and comfortable waist-belt-type device by using the body impedance analysis (BIA) technique. To support various measurement scenarios, we develop applications by connecting the device to a smartphone. To minimize motion noises, which are inevitable when monitoring over an extended period, we propose a motion artifact reduction algorithm that exploits multiple frequency sources. The experimental results show a strong relationship between the impedance variation and the bladder volume; this confirms the feasibility of our system.