Dear Jacke L.
I am…read morefrom Ventura. I am a patient of Dr. Ho as well. Thank you very much for sharing with the public your feedbacks upon the visit to Dr. Ho's clinic. I am sorry that you were upset after the clinic visit. However, I find it unjustifiable in your comments stating that "Dr. Ho is a terrible doctor. If nothing is wrong with your eye, you will walk out with a diagnosis." If your eye has no problems to begin with, your primary care physician would not refer you to an ophthalmologist for an eye exam.
I find that Dr. Ho is one of the best ophthalmologists I have ever encountered, given that I have seen more about 10 ophthalmologists for my chronic eye conditions in my life. Not only addressing the reasons you are referred to our clinic for, Dr. Ho also performed a thorough eye examination above and beyond required by the referral.
The clinic is well-equipped with all state-to-art diagnostic machines that could image all aspects from the front to the back of the eyes. If Dr. Ho found any abnormal signs on his examination of my eyes, he always showed me the photos of my eye conditions or have me look through the mirrors and explained to me what the abnormalities and what the treatment options are. He never pushed me to go on surgery immediately, but started out with the most simple but appropriate treatment plan and advanced it in accordance to the disease conditions. Furthermore, he presented to me the latest therapeutic technologies that none of the previous ophthalmologists had told me about.
Dear Jacke, I trust that, whatever diagnosis he found in your eyes is real and proven by photos taken right in the clinic and shown to you for your understanding about your eye conditions. All the patients I talked with at Dr. Ho's clinic told me the same.
All of us (from babies to adults) are at risk of certain eye diseases. Most common are glaucoma, narrow iridocorneal angles (especially among those who are of Asian origin or who have dark and thick iris), and macular degeneration, to name a few. At the very early stage of these eye conditions, we can still see 20/20 without noticing any warning signs or symptoms of these diseases (you can go to website www.glaucoma.org written by top glaucoma subspecialists targeted to the general population).
Many of our eye diseases are due to damage or loss of visual nerve cells, including glaucoma or macula degeneration, which are what I currently have. At the present time, nerve cells are the only type of cells in the body which cannot regenerate after damage or loss, unless research currently undergoing on stem cells allows doctors to help patients regenerate nerve cells in the future.
Due to the irreversible nature of visual nerve cell death at the present time, you can find online that the American Academy of Ophthalmology recommend everyone have a routine eye check up despite vision 20/20, in hope to discover asymptomatic eye disease at the early stage so that treatment can starts to halt or slow down further loss or damage of visual nerve cells (http://development.aao.org/eyecare/treatment/eye-exams.cfm#)
Dear Jacke, I agree with you that the waiting time in Dr. Ho's clinic can be a few hours long. However, during this waiting time, patients are performing various visual tests before seeing Dr. Ho to go over the test results. Furthermore, Dr. Ho spend as much time as needed to explain and answer to all questions that I have about my eye conditions.
Most importantly, Dr. Ho performs a very careful eye examination, not only to address the questions of concerns that I go to his office for, but also to look for any other potential eye diseases that I am unaware of despite my vision being 20/20. Again, he always documents my eye conditions with photos to help me understand the eye conditions and to monitor them with treatment over time. He never jumped into conclusion of any diagnosis of my eye without presenting to me my eye photos or testing results.
I have been in many other eye clinics where the waiting time is less than an hour. However, the ophthalmologists spend only 5-minute encounter with patients so the they can see as many as 50 to 100 patients a day. No time for photos taken and explanations about my eye conditions. No time for my questions addressed. Of course, no time for the ophthalmologists to ask me questions about my eye conditions. The doctors look at my eyes in less than a minute.
These previous ophthalmologists told me my eyes were very fine except the dry eye symptoms. However, the symptoms never got improved after multiple 5-minute encounter with the doctors and treatment with only artificial tears, until I saw Dr. Ho, who showed me the photos of my cornea surface which had been severely eroded from the tear-film insufficiency. Dr. Ho treated my eyes with additional Restasis eyedrops and bandage medicated-membrane contact lens. I now feel no more gritty sensation, burning pain, or redness.