MORRISVILLE, N.C.
TearScience®, a privately held medical device company, today announced that the world-renowned Shinagawa LASIK Center has acquired TearScience’s system for assessing and treating evaporative dry eye. The clinic will be establishing a new dry eye center, based upon TearScience’s technology, in order to better serve its large and growing patient population of dry eye sufferers. Japan is the second largest dry eye market in the world with nearly $1 billion in dry eye product sales in 2011.
Shinagawa LASIK Center has performed more than 1 million LASIK procedures as of August 31, 2012, the highest number of LASIK procedures performed throughout the world at an ophthalmic center. The center is known worldwide for providing excellent patient care. The Shinagawa LASIK Center has a total of five sites in Japan including Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, Sapparo, and Fukuoka. Four sites will refer dry eye patients to the new dry eye center to be located at its Tokyo office.
“I am fully convinced of the validity and usefulness of the TearScience system,” said Minoru Tomita, MD, PhD, executive medical director at Shinagawa LASIK Center. “It will help us make a grand leap forward in providing better care for evaporative dry eye patients. This technology will play an important role in managing this chronic, progressive disease. I have firsthand experience with LipiFlow® having had one of my eyes treated recently. It feels significantly better than my untreated eye after just two weeks.”
TearScience’s system includes two medical devices, the LipiView® Ocular Surface Interferometer and the LipiFlow® Thermal Pulsation System. Evaporative dry eye occurs when Meibomian glands in the eyelids become obstructed and do not secrete the oily lipids needed to keep the water portion of tears from evaporating too quickly. LipiView® provides detailed digital images of a dry eye patient’s tear film for the physician to assess the lipid layer while the LipiFlow® treats a root cause of evaporative dry eye disease by unblocking obstructed Meibomian glands located in the eyelids during an in-office procedure. The goal of unblocking the Meibomian glands is to allow them to resume their natural production of lipids for a healthy tear film.
“We are delighted and humbled to have Dr. Tomita and the world’s largest ophthalmic clinic, the Shinagawa LASIK Center, among our growing list of customers,” said Tim Willis, chief executive officer and co-founder of TearScience. “Adding Shinagawa LASIK Center as a customer in the large Japanese market demonstrates that TearScience’s system is becoming the standard of care for evaporative dry eye patients worldwide.”
About TearScience, Inc.
Headquartered in Morrisville, North Carolina, TearScience has pioneered devices that provide significant clinical improvement in the treatment of evaporative dry eye. Of the millions dry eye sufferers worldwide, approximately 86 percent have evaporative dry eye, which is caused by Meibomian Gland Dysfunction (MGD) and a lipid deficiency of the eye’s natural tear film. The Tear Film and Ocular Surface Society (TFOS) workshop, involving two years of work by 50 leading experts from around the world, concluded that MGD is an under-estimated condition and is very likely the most frequent cause of dry eye disease. Common symptoms of the disease include eye irritation, dryness, redness, tiredness, and visual disturbances. TearScience’s integrated, in-office system enables eye care professionals to effectively address a root cause of evaporative dry eye, obstructed Meibomian glands. For additional information, visit www.tearscience.com.
CONTACT
TearScience
Mary Hecht-Kissell, 919-459-4803
mhkissell@tearscience.com
