Florida Today from Cocoa, Florida • Page 44

1 mi 2D FLORIDA TODAY, Sunday, February 16, 1992 uoctors answer questions about glaucoma 'Unsolved Mysteries' episode focuses on Tami-Lynn Leppert's disappearance GLAUCOMA, From ID tion the patient can tolerate. That amount is different for each patient and therefore the timing of surgery will differ from patient to patient. The advantage of laser surgery is it does not involve entering the eye with an instrument and, therefore, does not carry the risk of infection. The advantage of conven-, tional surgery is that usually a much lower intraocular pressure can be achieved. I have high blood pressure and diabetes.

How can the doctor diagnose glaucoma because my eyes are blurred anyway? Zorbis Glaucoma is diagnosed in a variety of ways. Glaucoma usually is thought of as meaning high pressure inside the eye. The high pressure inside the eye causes a change in the structure of the eye that the ophthalmologist can see by looking inside the eye. This change inside the eye also causes a change in the way the eye sees, which can be detected by testing. You can have glaucoma without having blurred vision and you can have blurred vision without having glaucoma.

The danger of glaucoma is that you can have significant loss of vision from glaucoma without being aware of it and that is why regular checkups are important to detect it before damage occurs, because the vision that is lost cannot be brought back. Does using Timoptic have any effect on reducing a person's pulse rate? Zorbis: Yes. It falls in the category of drugs called beta blockers and, as a result, it can cause or make worse certain heart or lung disorders. It can cause a slow heart rate, or an irregular heart rate, low blood pressure, congestive heart failure or fainting episodes. It also can cause breathing difficulties, especially in asthmatics, from contraction of the air passages in the lung.

Other effects upon the nervous system have been reported and there are other rarer effects. Is it possible to have a pressure that is considered within safe limits and still have increasing damage from glaucoma? Zorbis: Yes. The measurement of the pressure in the eyes is only a number and it refers only to an average person. There are individuals who can lose vision even if their pressure is maintained in a normal range. There also are patients who can lose vision even if the is relatively low.

Fortunately, these two circumstances are uncommon. Eye pressure measurement is only a guideline and other factors, such as side vision and optic nerve damage, need to be considered before making a decision about whether any individual's pressure is safe for that individual. Do all ophthalmologists treat glaucoma or does one have to be a specialist? Zorbis: To the best of my knowledge, all ophthalmologists treat glaucoma. There are subspecialists who usually have additional training or interest in glaucoma. It is possible for a general ophthalmologist to treat a patient with glaucoma for many years and then decide the patient's glaucoma has worsened to the point where he needs a consultation from a subspe-cialist.

I have been diagnosed with glaucoma and have seen several different doctors. I used Timoptic but it did not seem to help the pressure. My current doctor stopped the drops. My eyesight seems to be quite normal but I have pain that can last for hours. What should I do next? Zorbis: You should discuss the pain with your eye doctor to find its cause it and whether you need to be under treatment for glaucoma and any other eye condition.

You have assumed the pain is because of glaucoma but that is not at all certain. You can have glaucoma without pain and pain without having glaucoma. I am pleased that your eyesight seems to be normal but you still may have glaucoma that needs to be treated. Pain that can last for hours is usually not part of the common type of glaucoma for which we use Timoptic. I have glaucoma in both eyes, macular degeneration and double vision.

I recently had cataract surgery on one eye and will have the other done this week. Is there any chance of keeping any of my sight? I am 76 years old? Taylor As you may know, macular degeneration in most cases cannot be effectively cured or treated. I think having the cataracts removed should improve your vision even though the macular degeneration may decrease the chances of having good vision. We hope that sometime in the near future macular degeneration can be effectively treated. line of questioning.

"They were asking me questions like, 'Did I think Linda had anything to do with Tami's Roberts says. "So I told them I wasn't gonna go on a show and start slinging mud on her mother. I told them everything I knew on the phone and that wasn't good enough." One of Leppert's close confidants, Rick Adams of Rockledge, did agree to be interviewed by "Unsolved Mysteries." Having just signed a four-album contract with the Alternative Music Group in Nashville, the Christian-rock artist appears headed for the sort of stardom he always thought Leppert would enjoy. The night before she disappeared, Adams, now 26, accompanied Leppert to a local church, where he says they prayed together. He says she was legitimately afraid of something.

Though she never got specific with him, Adams says some of her departing words were, "I may have to go away for awhile." Adams' name is listed as a contact on the police file, and his telephone number in the report remains unchanged since 1983. But Adams says he told the "Mysteries" producers more than he ever told police. "To this day, the cops have never called to ask me about anything," Adams says. "Pretty strange, isn't it? I thought I'd be a logical person to question, since I was with her the night before she disappeared." Klineman won't say exactly which angle "Unsolved Mysteries" intends to pursue. "But I do think she's the victim of some sort of criminal element," he says.

"It's difficult for me to think she just left one day and never came back." Thanks to tips from "Unsolved Mysteries" viewers anywhere from 20 million to 30 million on Wednesday evenings Klineman says the show has helped solve 105 riddles at last count, or roughly 25 percent of its total story load. But that also means that 75 percent of Robert Stack's narratives have never been resolved. With no leads reported since 1983, Tami-Lynn Leppert's disappearance easily qualifies for the challenge. recalls his two telephone conversations with Roberts as being "short and non-specific." He says the only thing that bothered him was when Roberts broke two appointments to come to the station for a face-to-face interview. "That concerned me greatly," Scraggs says, adding, "Roberts was never properly interrogated." Scraggs says he hasn't questioned Roberts in seven years.

Today, Roberts answers the telephone at a residential number on the original police report. Roberts, a 30-year-old Melbourne car salesman, says he met Leppert in one of Curtis' acting classes around 1980. He says the Tami he remembers suffered a "drastic" and "weird" character change in the months before her disappearance. He says that she told him she was unhappy at home and that she wanted to leave. "Everything seemed to be falling in on her at the time," Roberts says, "and she was acting real paranoid.

She said her mom had put her in a hospital against her will and that (Tami) was sleeping with a knife under her pillow stuff like that. I don't know what happened to her. All I know is that there was this explosion, and she really freaked out." Roberts says Leppert called him in Lakeland, where he worked in a bank, and asked him to drive over and pick her up. He says she also asked him to lend her some money. "I didn't even have to get out of the car, she was waiting for me," Roberts says.

"All I know is, she wanted out" Roberts says that he gave Leppert $300 and that she wanted him to drop her off with friends in Fort Lauderdale. Roberts says he didn't have time for that, suggesting instead that he take her home. "At that point she said, 'Let me out. Let me out! Stop, So I just said OK, whatever you want," he says. "And that's the last I saw of her." Roberts says that he cooperated fully with the police investigation and that he was never scheduled for an appointment at the Cocoa Beach police station.

After initially agreeing to appear on "Unsolved Mysteries," Roberts backed out when he understood the proposed 8 of passes needed by a Patient is called a refraction. This is xrequently performed during eye Mams. However, it is not a test for Qj I have glaucoma on my right i eye and I use Proplne drops and Betagan drops dally. Recently, my opntnalmologlst recommended laser surgery? Would this ellml-, "ate my having to use the drops? -r McManus: In patients who already are using medications for glaucoma, a laser would be indicated if the medications are causing serious side effects, which the patient cannot tolerate, or if the glaucoma is progressing despite medical therapy. Is there a vitamin supplement that will alleviate glaucoma.

Should coffee or any other foods be avoided when one has glaucoma? McManus: At the present time, there is no known vitamin that will alleviate glaucoma. At one point, it was thought that coffee and beverages with caffeine glaucoma to become worse. However, controlled clinical stu--dents have indicated that coffee and caffeine do not have an adverse effect in glaucoma. I am a M-year-old man with diabetes. When I wake up during night to go to the bathroom my hurt very much.

It takes about 30 seconds before I can even open them. Is this a symptom of glaucoma? I have been using artificial tears. McManus: These symptoms are not consistent with glaucoma. Most likely, you have dry eyes, for which you are taking artificial tears. It is important, however, that people realize that for 95 percent of patients with glaucoma there are no symptoms such as pain, blurred vision or redness.

The most com-i mon form of glaucoma, open angle I glaucoma, does not have symptoms until very late in the disease. However a rarer form of glauco-' ma, called narrow angle glaucoma which usually occurs in far-; sighted people does cause pain, blurring, redness andor seeing halos around lights. The patient should seek medical attention promptly. Please explain the difference between conventional surgery and laser surgery and what conditions warrant each one. McManus: Laser surgery for includes the Argon laser trabeculoplasty and the laser peripheral iridectomy.

The Argon trabecuoloplasty is to reduce pressure in the eye and peripheral iridectomy to prevent an attack of glaucoma. Conventional surgery for glauco-tna usually is indicated when the -intraocular pressure needs to be lowered by a large amount or if the Jaser surgery has not lowered the pressure to the ideal range. The indication for surgery is progression of glaucoma despite the maximum amount of medica AMI-LYNN, From ID in trouble. It started in April 1983. Curtis says her daughter underwent a radical personality transformation, withdrawing from friends, brooding in her room, refusing even to eat food from her own plate because she suspected it was poisoned.

Curtis says Leppert told her she had seen "something so horrible I'm going to get killed for it" She alluded to a spider web of drugs, money laundering and violence, but she remained vague about the details. During the filming of a guns 'n' gore scene from "Scarface" Brian DePalma's cocaine-gang epic Leppert became so distraught she had to be removed from the set in Miami and taken home. She finally snapped in Rockledge, when the wind blew the door shut behind her. Locked out of the house, Leppert picked up a baseball bat and bashed in a window. Curtis then checked Leppert into a mental health clinic in Melbourne for observation.

Curtis says the only conclusion drawn from Leppert's two-day visit was that her daughter had no drugs in her system. Days later, on July 6, 1983, Leppert stepped out of the house and into a car driven by an acquaintance named Keith Roberts, who says he subsequently dropped her off at Cocoa Beach's Glass Bank building on SR A1A around 1 p.m. Roberts was the last person known to have seen Leppert alive. Beyond that lie layers of dense innuendo, the kind of complicated, sound bite-proof details that probably won't make it into the "Unsolved Mysteries" segment. Curtis says she suspects that Roberts knows more than he told the Cocoa Beach police and that authorities failed to rigorously investigate the disappearance.

Lt. Jim Scraggs, who handled the case in 1983, says Curtis' suspicions about Roberts never panned out. "Given no more information than we had, there wasn't much more we could do," Scraggs says. "There was nothing out of the ordinary about the guy. No criminal history, no nothing." On the other hand, Scraggs NEW SHOW WEDNESDAY SUNDAY BeachCxXD UINEMA S.R.

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