How to help your patients dealing with the ocular effects of long COVID
Roya Attar, OD, recently presented a session at the American Optometric Association’s 5th World Congress of Optometry. She talks with Optometry 360 about how COVID-related ocular effects are part of what optometrists should be helping patients navigate.
Roya Attar, OD:
Hello, my name is Dr. Roya Attar. I am an associate professor at the University of Mississippi Medical Center and during my session I discussed the ocular implications of long COVID. Now, regardless of practice type, honestly, you will likely see a patient that will have this in their history and these patients will present with a range of symptoms, and you can see a range of signs as well on examination from the anterior segment to the posterior segment.
There’s a lot to still learn about this condition and some of these things we’ll only learn as time progresses. During my session, I discussed a lot of the different things that these patients can show up with, how to manage these patients, important imaging that should be taken of these patients as you continue to monitor them. Most importantly, I highly stress that a lot of these patients just need to be heard and listened to and taking that extra time and providing them also with resources.
Individuals with this condition are usually seeing multiple providers. As the eye care provider, we need to be in communication with all of the team that is taking care of this patient because a lot of those things, it’s almost like a syndromic manifestation. It affects multiple organs and the eye is unique because with our imaging particular with OCT-A, we’re able to see a lot of those early microvascular changes that can happen in patients with long COVID.
You know, I was surprised that this session was selected because this is not a topic that is usually discussed anymore. COVID is almost like that thing that happened that you don’t want to remember that it did. But we have a lot of patients who are still suffering with this, and very importantly, COVID still exists today. There are new variants out that are also much stronger rate of transmission. This is something that we are going to continue to have to deal with as providers and it’s very important that we are all aware of it.
