Are You at Risk For Glaucoma?

Everyone is at risk for glaucoma. However, certain groups are at higher risk than others.
People at high risk for glaucoma should get a complete eye exam, including eye dilation, every one or two years.
The following are groups at higher risk for developing glaucoma.

African-Americans
Glaucoma is the leading cause of blindness among African-Americans. It is six to eight times more common in African-Americans than in Caucasians.

People Over 60
Glaucoma is much more common among older people. You are six times more likely to get glaucoma if you are over 60 years old.

Family Members with Glaucoma
The most common type of glaucoma, primary open angle glaucoma, is hereditary. If members of your immediate family have glaucoma, you are at a much higher risk than the rest of the population.
Family history increases risk of glaucoma four to nine times.

Hispanics in Older Age Groups
Recent studies indicate that the risk for Hispanic populations is greater than those of predominantly European ancestry, and that the risk increases among Hispanics over age 60.

Asians
People of Asian descent appear to be at some risk for angle closure glaucoma. Angle closure glaucoma accounts for less than 10% of all diagnosed cases of glaucoma. Otherwise there is no known increased risk in Asian populations.

Steroid Users
Some evidence links steroid use to glaucoma. A study reported in the Journal of American Medical Association, March 5, 1997, demonstrated a 40% increase in the incidence of ocular hypertension and open angle glaucoma in adults who require approximately 14 to 35 puffs of steroid inhaler to control asthma. This is a very high dose, only required in cases of severe asthma.

Eye Injury
Injury to the eye may cause secondary open angle glaucoma. This type of glaucoma can occur immediately after the injury or years later.
Blunt injuries that “bruise” the eye (called blunt trauma) or injuries that penetrate the eye can damage the eye’s drainage system, leading to traumatic glaucoma.
The most common cause is sports-related injuries such as baseball or boxing.

Other Risk Factors
Other possible risk factors include:
high myopia (nearsightedness)
diabetes
hypertension
Central corneal thickness less than .5 mm.

http://www.glaucoma.org/

The Origin of Contact Lenses

There is much debate about who invented the concept of contact lenses but this is what we do know. Back in 1508 Leonardo da Vinci made sketches of a rough version of what a lens for the eye would look like. Then in 1632 Rene Descartes came up with the idea of a contact lens for the cornea.
In 1801, building upon Descartes' earlier idea, a man named Thomas Young came up with a way to repair his own flawed vision using a glass tube filled with water and fashioned with a microscopic lens on the other end. Contact lenses were already beginning to take shape.
During the years 1887 and 1888 more progress was made with contact lenses. The first contact lenses to be made completely out of glass were invented by three men by the names of A. Eugen Fick, Edouard Kalt and August Muller. Although these lenses were a step in the right direction of progress, they tended to be anything but comfortable and corrected only a small amount of vision problems.
The development of contact lenses made a huge step in the vision correction field when a new plastic called polymethylmethacrylate (abbreviated PMMA) appeared on the market. Following close on the heels of this new plastic, was a man named Kevin Touhy who applied for, and was approved for a patent in 1948 to make the very first ever plastic contact lenses. These lenses proved a great deal more comfortable for contact lens wearers.
The inventor most widely credited with the pioneering of contact lenses however is a chemist from Czechoslovakia by the name of Otto Wichterle in the year 1961. His soft lenses continue to be the number one choice for contact lens wearers throughout the world.

http://www.vision2020ng.org/article.cfm/id/43665