Dr. Proske tells about his personal experience with optomap®, and how it saved his life.
I had just turned 21 years old when I had a hemorrhagic stroke. It turned my life around. In an instant I went from being a successful undergraduate student at Texas A&M to not even knowing my girlfriend’s name. Fortunately I was young and over the next several years was able to gain my mental abilities back.
23 years later, our clinic was doing routine maintenance on our optomap® Retinal Imager. In order to verify that the mirrors were clean, I took images of my own eyes. When I examined the image of my right eye, I noticed several hemorrhages at the far left edge of my retina. Click here to see a larger version.
Over the next several months, I continued to monitor my optomap® images, and found that I would have spontaneous hemorrhages in each eye. Without optomap® imaging, these hemorrhages would not have been caught.
I then saw a hematologist, and with some extensive blood testing, discovered that I actually had a coagulation disorder. This was a timebomb waiting to go off again, perhaps in a future debilitating or even life-threatening incident. I have stopped off of all NSAIDs and any other blood-thinners and am now doing great. By finally knowing the source of my stroke and taking the proper precautions, I can now manage this disorder.
The optomap® Retinal Imager probably saved my life! You can see why I highly recommend that my patients have optomap® imaging every year.
