For the first time in Florida, patients with glaucoma have a new treatment option known as the Trabectome. The minimally invasive procedure, which is available at Mayo Clinic and takes about 20 minutes, is designed to decrease pressure within the eye and stabilize the vision.

BiCOM Inc. in conjunction with The Lions Clubs of Staten Island held an educational/screening event to detect and prevent glaucoma using hand held tonometer Diaton which screens through the eyelid without use of anesthetic drops. The event was very successful, and the Lions Club members learned how to further their attempts to educate and screen the public in order to prevent blindness. Lions Club members are planning to add painless Diaton tonometry to their health screening events.

Innovative prism glasses can significantly improve the vision and the daily lives of patients with hemianopia, a condition that blinds half the visual field in both eyes. The peripheral prism glasses, which were invented by Dr. Eli Peli, a Senior Scientist at Schepens Eye Research Institute, were evaluated in the first community-based multi-center trial of such a device, which is published in the May issue of the Archives of Ophthalmology.

Researchers in Massachusetts are reporting an advance in bridging huge gaps in medical knowledge about the biochemical changes that occur inside the eyes of individuals with diabetic retinopathy (DR) — a leading cause of vision loss and blindness in adults.

Researchers at the John A. Moran Eye Center at the University of Utah and collaborative institutions have identified a gene called erythropoietin (EPO) that contributes to increased risk of severe diabetic eye and kidney diseases, called retinopathy and nephropathy.

A JDRF collaboration between Johns Hopkins researchers and Genentech has shown that a drug for the treatment of diabetic eye disease has performed better in clinical trials than the current standard treatment using laser surgery.

In a clinical trial at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, researchers from The University of Pennsylvania have used gene therapy to safely restore vision in three young adults with a rare form of congenital blindness. Although the patients have not achieved normal eyesight, the preliminary results set the stage for further studies of an innovative treatment for this and possibly other retinal diseases.

Babies with an eye-alignment disorder called infantile esotropia have delays in motor development milestones, but development “catches up” after corrective surgery, reports a study in the April Journal of AAPOS (American Association for Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus.

It is the No. 1 line-item cost of Medicare reimbursement and affects more than 20 million people in the United States. Cataracts, which can have devastating effects on the eye, affect 42 percent of the population between the ages of 70 and 80, and 68 percent of the population over the age of 80, according to the National Eye Institute.

The ocular lens belongs to the optical apparatus and focuses incidental beams of light onto the retina. Now, a research team led by Professor Dr. Jochen Graw of the Institute of Developmental Genetics, of the Helmholtz Zentrum München, has been able to decipher a genetic defect responsible for small eyes and an incomplete, clouded lens in the so-called Aey12 mouse mutants. These results lead to conclusions concerning cataracts in humans, because, in this case too, the lens loses its transparency.

A new study provides more insight into cataracts, the leading cause of vision loss and blindness in the elderly, finding that small pieces of a perfectly normal protein become toxic during the aging process.

Scientists at Schepens Eye Research Institute have discovered what chemical in the eye triggers the dormant capacity of certain non-neuronal cells to transform into progenitor cells, a stem-like cell that can generate new retinal cells.