New Look Eyewear Inc. just announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire the assets and business of Vogue Optical Inc., located in Prince Edward Island.

 

Vogue Optical comprises 65 stores, including 21 in Nova Scotia, 21 in New Brunswick, 15 in Newfoundland and Labrador, 5 in P.E.I. and 3 in other provinces, as well as a lens processing facility.

 

The purchase price of the assets and business of Vogue Optical will be $74 million, and the acquisition is expected to close by December 2, 2013, subject to the usual closing conditions.

 

Vogue Optical will operate as a stand-alone business based in Charlottetown, and both groups will continue to grow in their respective markets.

 

With this acquisition, New Look will have a network of over 140 locations, making it the third largest retail optical company in Canada

 

Transitions Optical, Inc. has named the finalists for its annual Transitions Awards program, which recognizes leading independent eyecare professionals and optical retailers in Canada for their year-long commitment to promoting eye health and Transitions^® lenses.

 

The three finalists for the fifth annual Transitions Eyecare Professional of the Year award are Sandy Koppé, O.D., from The Eye Care Group, with three locations in Alberta (west region); Wael Yassein from The Eye Shoppe, in Ontario (central region); and Pierre Vallée, O.D., from the Clinique D’Optométrie Pierre Vallée, in Quebec (east region).

 

Finalists for the second annual Transitions Retailer of the Year award include Costco Optical, which has over 60 locations across Canada; Loblaw Optical, which has more than 130 locations in eight provinces; and Lunetterie New Look Eyewear, which has over 70 stores in Quebec and Ontario.

 

The finalists will be honoured, and the winners announced, during Transitions Academy, to be held January 26-29 in Orlando.  

 

Source:

 

Transitions Optical inc.

                           

Researchers from Baylor and Harvard Universities claim that parents can check their children for retinoblastoma using their digital cameras.

 

Using photographs taken with amateur digital cameras, the researchers themselves observed evidence of leukocoria or “white eye,” the main symptom of retinoblastoma. These findings pave the way for the development of methods to enable earlier detection of this eye cancer, which mostly occurs in children from birth to five years old. Early diagnosis is crucial, as this cancer can cause severe vision loss, the loss of one or both eyes, even death if it spreads to the brain.

 

“Newborns and infants don’t typically get checked out by an ophthalmologist, but many of them do get their retinas scanned multiple times a week, when mom or dad are snapping pictures to share on Facebook,” said Bryan Shaw, assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry at Baylor University. “In a majority of retinoblastoma cases, it is the parents that initiate the diagnosis based on seeing leukocoria or ‘white eye’ in photos of their children.”

 

Leukocoria is often detected after the tumour has already significantly grown in size. This research is a major step toward the creation of software that will help parents notice the symptoms sooner.

Source:

http://eyewiretoday.com/view.asp?r=crstoday&a=20131111-parents_can_check_their_kids_for_retinoblastoma_using_digital_photography

 

Children born extremely prematurely are more likely to develop retinal detachment than those born at term, according to a Swedish study.

 

This is the first long-term study on the link between the two conducted on a large population base. The researchers studied the files of more than three million births in Sweden between 1973 and 2008. They separated the individuals into two groups, based on whether they were born before or after 1986, the year a national retinopathy of prematurity screening program was established.

 

The results showed a connection between preterm births and this type of eye condition:

 

• Children born extremely prematurely (less than 28 weeks of gestation) between 1973 and 1986 had a 19-fold higher risk of retinal detachment. That rate fell to nine times higher for those born after 1986.
• Children born very prematurely (28 to 31 weeks of gestation) between 1973 and 1986 had a four-fold increased risk, and that rate fell to three times higher for those born after 1986.
• Moderately preterm birth (32 to 36 weeks of gestation) did not have a significant impact on this type of risk.

 

“We may just be seeing the tip of the iceberg of late ophthalmic complications after preterm birth. Not only does the risk of retinal detachment increase with age, but there has also been an increase in survival among people born prematurely since the 1970s,” says Swedish pediatrician Anna-Karin Edstedt Bonamy.

Source:

http://www.aao.org/newsroom/release/premature-birth-retina-detachment.cfm

 

 

A recent study shows that blindness results in a permanent state of pain hypersensitivity, which is manifested, in particular, by a hypersensitivity to thermal stimuli.

 

One of the biological functions of acute pain is to prevent injury. Vision plays a critical role in this function, as it allows a person to detect and avoid potentially hazardous situations. But what happens in people who are blind? A recent study conducted in Italy and in Denmark indicates that they compensate for the absence of vision with a heightened vigilance for pain.

 

The three experiments conducted on blind people and people with normal vision consisted in measuring their pain threshold and the detection thresholds for warmth and cold perceptions. The results showed that, compared to sighted people, congenitally blind people had lower heat pain thresholds, found heat pain stimuli to be more painful and had increased sensitivity to cold pain stimuli.

 

“We have shown that the absence of vision from birth induces a hypersensitivity to painful stimuli, lending new support to a model of sensory integration of vision and pain processing,” explained Dr. Ron Kupers, from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

Sources:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/11/131101125413.htm

http://www.painjournalonline.com/article/S0304-3959(13)00275-3/abstract