January is Glaucoma Awareness Month!

Glaucoma has often been referred to as "the silent thief of sight", due to the fact that many symptoms of the disease can affect you without your knowledge. This is because glaucoma causes damage to the optic nerve and can reduce your peripheral vision without you noticing any change.
Glaucoma is the leading cause of preventable blindness today and affects over 4 million americans. Glaucoma is 6 to 8 times more common in African Americans than Caucasians.

According to the Glaucoma Research Foundation, "The best way to protect your sight from glaucoma is to get a comprehensive eye examination. Then, if you have glaucoma, treatment can begin immediately."

New technologies are also helping detect glaucoma in patients earlier, leading to initiating treatments faster, and thus helping preserve vision. One type of this technology is found in scanning lasers that are able to effectively show the retinal nerve fiber layer and the optic nerve head. Two such instruments that effectively use this type of technology are the OCT, and GDX.
These instruments work by helping your eye doctor map out the retinal nerve fiber layer and thus examine your risk for glaucoma and track any progression of the disease. If you have a family history of glaucoma, are over 40 years old, or have other risk factors an annual comprehensive eye exam is a must to help rule out the presence of glaucoma.

A Glaucoma Test in a Contact Lens?

Advances in technology are all around us today, and if you want to stay on the cutting edge then you have to keep up to date with the latest information and constantly be on the lookout for what's next in your industry.

Eyecare is no different and if you are standing still then you will be left behind, so it is important to keep an eye on some of the emerging technologies out there to see if the knowledge behind the technology, the practicality of its use, and the evolving industry's practices can combine to support its overall implementation.

The picture above represents an interesting technology that is on the horizon, it is a contact lens that measures your intraocular pressure throughout the day. The information yielded from this contact lens could be particularly valuable in the area of glaucoma management because the main area of treatment in glaucoma is controlling intraocular pressure.

Glaucoma, which is an eye disease where eye pressure is often elevated causing optic nerve damage and peripheral vision loss, can present with varying intraocular pressure readings throughout the span of an entire day. Thus, monitoring intraocular pressure through a contact lens in someone with suspected glaucoma or one who is being treated for glaucoma would present a wealth of information to possibly help prevent damage to the eye from glaucoma and related eye diseases.

Read more about this exciting technology now being studied in Europe, by clicking here .