Intraoperative antibiotic irrigation decreases aqueous humor contamination during phacoemulsification. Further studies are warranted to determine the interrelationship between aqueous humor contamination and endophthalmitis in eyes with posterior capsular rupture.

The comparison of the efficacy of swabs containing tea tree oil and chamomile oil and baby shampoo (BS) in the treatment of seborrheic blepharitis was aimed. Methods: This randomized, double-blind, parallel-group, active control, multicenter clinical trial included patients with seborrheic blepharitis using block randomization (BS, n¼23; swabs, n¼26). Patients were treated with BS or swabs for 8 weeks followed by 4 weeks of treatment withdrawal. Change in Blepharitis Symptom measure (BLISS), Demodex count, Ocular Surface Disease Index (OSDI) score, Schirmer test, tear breakup time (TBUT), noninvasive TBUT (NI-TBUT), corneal staining, and meibography at different visits (baseline, fourth, , and 12th week) were the main outcome measures. Results: Patients in both groups showed similar baseline parameters (P.0.05). Patients using swabs showed significantly lower BLISS scores compared with patients using BS at the 4th, 8th, and 12th week visits (3.666.1 vs. 6.364.5 P¼0.011; 1.162.8 vs. 6.666.7, P,0.001; 0.962.8 vs. 5.766.6, P¼0.002, respectively). Patients using swabs showed improvement in OSDI scores after 8 weeks of treatment compared with the baseline visit (P,0.001). Despite a similar Demodex reduction effect in both treatment arms even after 4 weeks of treatment (P,0.001), both treatment modalities did not show any effect on the other parameters. Conclusion: Although both swabs and BS showed efficacy for the treatment of seborrheic blepharitis in terms of the Demodex reduction and symptomatic improvement, swabs may provide better symptomatic improvement. Four weeks of treatment discontinuation may not cause any recurrence in the symptoms or Demodex infestation.

In vivo confocal microscopy (IVCM) is a noninvasive, reproducible, and inexpensive diagnostic tool for corneal diseases. However, widespread and effortless image acquisition in IVCM creates serious image analysis workloads on ophthalmologists, and neural networks could solve this problem quickly. We have produced a novel deep learning algorithm based on generative adversarial networks (GANs), and we compare its accuracy for automatic segmentation of subbasal nerves in IVCM images with a fully convolutional neural network (U-Net) based method. Methods:We have collected IVCM images from 85 subjects. U-Net and GAN-based image segmentation methods were trained and tested under the supervision of three clinicians for the segmentation of corneal subbasal nerves. Nerve segmentation results for GAN and U-Net-based methods were compared with the clinicians by using Pearson's R correlation, Bland-Altman analysis, and receiver operating characteristics (ROC) statistics. Additionally, different noises were applied on IVCM images to evaluate the performances of the algorithms with noises of biomedical imaging. Results:The GAN-based algorithm demonstrated similar correlation and Bland-Altman analysis results with U-Net. The GAN-based method showed significantly higher accuracy compared to U-Net in ROC curves. Additionally, the performance of the U-Net deteriorated significantly with different noises, especially in speckle noise, compared to GAN. Conclusions:This study is the first application of GAN-based algorithms on IVCM images. The GAN-based algorithms demonstrated higher accuracy than U-Net for automatic corneal nerve segmentation in IVCM images, in patient-acquired images and noise applied images. This GAN-based segmentation method can be used as a facilitating diagnostic tool in ophthalmology clinics.Translational Relevance: Generative adversarial networks are emerging deep learning models for medical image processing, which could be important clinical tools for rapid segmentation and analysis of corneal subbasal nerves in IVCM images.

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Objective Blood pressure variability (BPV) is considered as a novel risk factor for cardiovascular disease including left ventricular hypertrophy, vascular stiffness, and renal dysfunction. In this study, we aimed to determine the relationship between ambulatory BPV with subclinical organ damage and vascular stiffness parameters in normotensive healthy subjects. Methods A total of 100 healthy subjects over 18 years of age were included in this cross-sectional study. We divided the participants into two groups according to the median value of the SD of mean 24-h blood pressure (BP) (Group 1: SD of mean 24-h BP <10.15 and Group 2: SD of mean 24-h BP >10.15). BPs of these subjects were recorded over a 24-h period using ambulatory BP monitoring. Mobil-O-Graph device was used to estimate the augmentation index (AIx), pulse wave velocity (PWV), and ambulatory BP measurement. The choroidal thickness was measured by using optical coherence tomography device. Results The mean age of the patients was 25.4 ± 5.0 years. Choroidal thickness was correlated with PWV, AIx, protein excretion, and SD of systolic and diastolic BP (P < 0.05). Additionally, participants with higher BP variability have lower choroidal thickness and higher AIx. Conclusion We showed that even in normotensive subjects, BPV correlates with choroid thickness. Thus, BPV can be an early prognostic parameter for pathologic vascular changes.

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Purpose: To investigate the repeatability of choroidal vascularity index (CVI) measurements in centered and decentered (regarding pupil entry position of the beam) directional subfoveal optical coherence tomography (OCT) scans with (CVI1) and without (CVI2) brightness adjustment. Methods: Thirty-two eyes of 32 healthy volunteers were included in this prospective study. First, the fovea was evaluated by a single horizontal enhanced depth imaging OCT scan in a centered direction. Then, the same subfoveal horizontal line was scanned in a decentered direction. The agreement between CVIs obtained from these centered and decentered directional OCT scans was investigated using Bland–Altman analysis and intraclass correlation coefficient. Results: Intraclass correlation coefficient between centered and decentered CVI1 was 0.71 (95% CI: 0.48–0.85, P value < 0.001). Intraclass correlation coefficient between centered and decentered CVI2 was 0.73 (95% CI: 0.5–0.86, P value < 0.001). The mean difference between centered and decentered directional measurements for CVI1 and CVI2 were 0.5 and 0.8, respectively. Conclusion: There is moderate agreement between CVIs obtained from centered and decentered directional single OCT scans of the same subfoveal area. Studies investigating choroidal vascularity should be standardized by using the same OCT beam direction in all scans.

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