title: A simple device to improve blinking.
abstract: A blink beeper was devised to remind patients with incomplete or infrequent blinking to blink completely and at normal intervals; the beeper worked by transmitting an audible tone every ten seconds through an earphone. In three postkeratoplasty patients, this simplistic approach not only resulted in a complete blink at regular intervals, but seemed to condition this response to continue when  the blink beeper was taken away; this resulted in healing of large chronic epithelial defects. The blink beeper has also proved valuable in patients with either punctate epithelial erosions or those who wore hard contact lenses unsuccessfully because of infrequent or incomplete blinking.
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D003214:Conditioning, Classical; D005143:Eyelids / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009885:Ophthalmology / Q000295:instrumentation*