Eye Care Professionals of WNY enhances patient comfort

with new, glaucoma testing instrument at Lancaster office.

Eye Care Professionals of Western New York, the area's largest, privately-owned, full service optometric practice, recently installed an Ocular Response Analyzer (ORA) at its new Lancaster office. The ORA is a state-of-the-art instrument that utilizes a gentle puff of air to measure eye pressure which is an essential test for detecting glaucoma, a group of eye diseases that can cause loss of eyesight without warning or symptoms. According to Alex Crinzi, O. D. of Eye Care Professionals of WNY, the ORA provides more complete information about the properties of a patient's cornea while resulting in a more comfortable test.

“The ORA takes into consideration the complex nature of a living cornea and provides the doctor with additional information about the strength characteristics of the cornea," he explained. "That can help us diagnose corneal pathologies and give us a better ability to qualify candidates for refractive surgery procedures, such as LASIK. And the instrument's gentle puff of air is the only thing the patient will notice."

The Glaucoma Research Foundation estimates that more than three million Americans have some form of the disease and only half of them know it. Screening for glaucoma is part of the comprehensive eye examination at Eye Care Professionals of WNY and the ORA will now assist the doctor in making his/her diagnosis. The ORA at the practice's Lancaster office is one of only about 150 such instruments installed in the United States.