Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Newsclip: Dry eye growing concern among doctors

WTAE-TV: Dry eye growing concern among doctors

This is the transcript of a report from May 14. Love to see headlines like this. The report however might have benefitted from some mathematical editing...

About 4.3 million Americans now have some form of dry eye, and their numbers are growing....

"Five to 15 percent over the age of 55 have moderate to severe dry eye, so that's going to be a huge number of patients, and we need to have better medical alternatives for these patients," said Dr. Deepindar Dhaliwal, director of cornea and refractive surgery at UPMC Eye and Ear Institute.


Excuse me but "five to 15 percent" of people over 55 is a lot more than 4.3 million Americans. Apparently more people have 'moderate to severe' dry eye than have 'some form" of dry eye.

Even conservative estimates put the total number of Americans with dry eye in the tens of millions, which is entirely in line with Dr. Dhaliwal's estimate. There are supposed to be at least 4 million people with Sjogrens syndrome alone (perhaps that's the 4.3 million number).