Members and staff of the NHS/UNMC Employee Diversity Network and the UMA Eye Specialty Clinic are encouraging everyone this week to reflect on vision impairment issues. June features multiple recognitions related to vision awareness, including Prevent Blindness and Vision Research Month, Eye Safety Week (June 27-July 5) and Helen Keller Deaf-Blind Awareness Week (the last week in June).
According to the Prevent Blindness America Association, more than two million Americans over the age of 40 are visually impaired, including 40,000 who are both deaf and blind. Vision problems affect one in 20 preschoolers and one in four school-age children. Untreated eye problems can worsen and lead to other serious problems, as well as affect learning ability, personality and adjustment in school. Americans spend approximately $38.4 billion in health-care costs associated with eye and vision disorders, yet less than 1 percent of U.S. health-care research is directed toward blindness issues. Blindness and vision impairment will place an increasingly heavy burden on the nation’s population, on the economy and the health care system as baby boomers age in the coming decades.
According to UMA Eye Specialty Clinic staff, there are five threats to vision care in particular need of awareness — glaucoma, macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy, amblyopia (lazy eye) and eye injuries.
Glaucoma can lead to total blindness. It produces no symptoms until it is very advanced, and many people have glaucoma and don’t know it. The only way to prevent vision loss from glaucoma is to have regular eye exams, especially if the person is African-American, has a family history of glaucoma or is over age 60. Anyone who hasn’t had an eye exam in the last five years should get one soon.
Macular degeneration causes the loss of the central vision down to limited peripheral vision and is the leading cause of vision loss in people over 60. Currently, there is no treatment for most cases of age-related macular degeneration. Protection from ultraviolet light with sunglasses is recommended. Dietary supplements of vitamin C, beta-carotene and zinc may be helpful for some cases.
People with diabetes are at risk for vision loss from diabetic retinopathy. An ophthalmologist can detect changes from diabetes before patients notice any change in vision. Early treatment of retinopathy can prevent vision loss. The best way to prevent eye problems over time is to keep the diabetes under good control and have a dilated eye exam annually.
Loss of vision from amblyopia or lazy eye occurs in three of every 100 children. It can occur from uncorrected crossing of the eyes. It may also result from something as simple as a need for glasses. If not corrected early, permanent loss of vision may result. The best way to prevent this is through screening programs by the child’s pediatrician or ophthalmologist.
A common cause of vision loss in young people is eye trauma. Fireworks, especially bottle rockets, blind many people each year, including many small children who are innocent bystanders. Many other eye injuries can be prevented through the use of safety glasses whenever working in activities in which objects may injure the eye.
Vision research in the western world is dated from 1604, when Kepler wrote the first explanation of the optics of the eye. But an Islamic scientist named Alhazen, born in 965 in Persia, is called the “Father of Optics” for his wrings on and experiments with lenses, mirrors, refraction and reflection. He correctly stated that vision results from light that is reflected into the eye by an object, not emitted by the eye itself and then reflected back, as Aristotle believed.
In 1850, Hermann von Helmholtz inaugurated the modern era in ophthalmology with his invention of the ophthalmoscope, which has done more to revolutionize the development of ophthalmology than any other invention or discovery. Before Helmholtz’s invention, it was not possible to visualize the posterior pole of the eye in a living subject. The ophthalmoscope permitted the clinical correlation of signs and symptoms with findings in the retina, vitreous, and optic nerve. The ophthalmoscope became the model for all forms of endoscopy that followed. It is often compared in importance with two earlier inventions – the telescope (17th century) and the stethoscope (early 19th century). All of these instruments made dramatic new information available.
Helen Keller was diagnosed as blind and deaf when she was 19 months old, but went on to become a writer, social reformer and academic who championed the cause of the deaf and blind throughout the world. On June 22, 1984, President Ronald Reagan commemorated the 104th anniversary of the birth of Helen Keller by proclaiming the last week in June as “Helen Keller Deaf-Blind Awareness Week.” He established the annual recognition in order to encourage public awareness of and compassion for the complex problems caused by deaf-blindness and to emphasize the contributions of deaf-blind persons to America.