City News Service——How SH Hospitals Use AI to Treat Vision Health

City News Service

 2025年6月11日 微信公众号

记者：Cai Wenjun

原文链接

https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/NaMqNMEizPPHIDCkI6MGcQ

How SH Hospitals Use AI to Treat Vision Health

June 6 was National Eye Care Day in China, which – yes, is a real thing – and like all state-approved themed days, it came with a flurry of lectures, screenings and enough pamphlets to wallpaper a clinic. The theme? Your eyeballs. Specifically: dry eyes, myopia and a few shiny new tools in the optometry toolbox.

If your eyes feel like sandpaper after scrolling Douyin or clicking through PDFs for hours, congratulations – you're part of the global dry eye epidemic. It's not just you. Between office screens, phone screens and every LED billboard on Huaihai Road, we've engineered an environment where blinking is optional and eye moisture is endangered. Most people grab eye drops and call it a day.

But at Longhua Hospital – Shanghai's flagship traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) center – Dr Zhang Yuyan says drops are just the band-aid. "Dry eye isn't a new condition," she explains. "In TCM, we've got centuries of theory and treatment behind it." Their approach combines Western techniques with traditional Chinese remedies, aiming to treat not just the dryness, but why your eyes are drying out in the first place. (Spoiler: It's not just the screens.)

Herbs, Heat and Eyeball Engineering

In TCM-speak, dry eye isn't just a hydration issue – it's a whole-body imbalance. Specifically, a lack of qi (think: your body's energy currency) and weakened liver and kidney function, which, in this context, aren't just about detoxing or chugging cranberry juice. They're more like internal regulators in the TCM ecosystem. The fix? Herbs. Lots of them.

Longhua Hospital's approach sounds a bit like something out of a wellness day spa crossed with a sci-fi lab: misting your eyeballs with a vaporized herbal cocktail of chrysanthemum, mint, mulberry leaf and a lesser-known player called Spanish needles. The herbs are blasted into micro-particles using ultrasound technology – yes, that same kind of ultrasonic buzz used to clean your fancy jewelry – then delivered straight to your ocular surface.

While your eyes are getting the spa treatment, tiny needles are gently poked into acupoints around your face to stimulate blood flow and qi. The goal? Wake up the tear glands. Especially helpful, says Dr Zhang, for folks suffering from Sjögren's syndrome, a tricky autoimmune condition where your immune system attacks your tear and saliva glands. (Translation: super dry everything.)

If your issue is blocked meibomian glands – those tiny oil-producing glands along your eyelids that keep tears from evaporating too fast – there's a tool for that, too. Longhua's engineers whipped up a special clamp (picture a mini-jaw of life, but for eyelids) that helps clear the gunk. Add in a little laser therapy, some gland massage and hot compresses soaked in herbal packs, and voilà: Your eye spa is complete.