Eye Health Awareness Week

This week is National Eye Health Week and it provides us with an ideal opportunity to raise awareness about eye health.  As regular readers of our newsletter, I know that you are already aware of the importance of eye health and I would encourage you to continue to raise that awareness with family and friends. 

Unfortunately, many eye conditions are more common as you get older, including cataract, glaucoma, and age-related macular degeneration.

Also, diabetic eye disease is a leading cause of impaired vision in diabetic patients.

The key for all of these conditions is early diagnosis and I cannot stress the importance of regularly seeing your opticians to get your eyes checked.

When you have a review with your optometrist, not only do they check to see whether glasses are needed, or if you do have glasses whether the prescription needs updating, but they also carry out a general eye health screen and this part of the eye test is where conditions can be found at an early stage. 

Lots of advancements are occurring in the area of glaucoma treatment with more and more patients being treated with glaucoma laser or minimally invasive glaucoma surgery, both of which have very high safety profiles. I am also glad to say that the treatments for retinal conditions such as macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy and maculopathy also show advancements in recent times.