Did you know… that researchers are hot on the trail of transformations in the treatment of glaucoma, including sustained release medications and surgeries that can be used throughout the disease’s progression? In the future, scientists hope even to restore vision loss from glaucoma through optic nerve cell regeneration. This is critically important given that glaucoma is the second leading cause of blindness in the world and that the number of blind and visually impaired people will double by the year 2050 as the US population ages. More.
Glaucoma Care and COVID-19
It’s also extremely concerning to note that according to a recent survey from the Glaucoma Research Foundation, one-third of glaucoma patients were not confident that their disease was well-managed during the initial months of the coronavirus pandemic. Overall, more than half of the patients (53 percent) surveyed said they had to delay and/or cancel a glaucoma appointment during the first months of the pandemic. Patients who had the lowest levels of confidence regarding their glaucoma management were 30 percent more likely to have had an eye care appointment delayed and/or cancelled as compared to patients with higher levels of confidence. For a disease that requires close, in-person monitoring of intraocular pressure, this is a serious concern.
Visionary Scientists
Brian Samuels, MD, PhD, a clinician-scientist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, is the primary investigator or co-primary investigator on three NIH grants and was recently awarded the prestigious Research to Prevent Blindness Physician-Scientist Award. His research laboratory focuses on identifying how the brain controls pressure inside the eye. He has also established himself as one of the leading experts in understating how differences in eye and brain pressure can lead to glaucoma and other ophthalmic diseases. More.
