National Glaucoma Research
New Website Coming Soon!
The American Health Assistance Foundation is pleased to announce that we will be launching a new and improved website later this month.
We invite you to come back soon to explore and discover the many new features designed to give our guests an engaging experience, while providing them with the -*-same cutting-edge information on medical and scientific research involving Alzheimer’s disease, macular degeneration and glaucoma.
National Glaucoma Research (NGR), a program of the American Health Assistance Foundation was established in 1978 to
fund research on and educate the public about glaucoma. Since the program's inception, NGR has awarded more than
$15.7 million to support basic research into the causes and potential treatments of this disease.
Glaucoma is actually a group of eye diseases that lead to damage
of the optic nerve (the bundle of nerve fibers that carries information from
the eye to the brain), which can then lead to vision loss and the possibility
of blindness. Optic nerve damage usually occurs in the presence of high intraocular
pressure. Glaucoma can occur with normal or even below-normal eye pressure. Worldwide,
it is estimated that about 66.8 million people have visual impairment
from glaucoma, with 6.7 million suffering from blindness.
In the United States, approximately 2.2 million people age 40 and older
have glaucoma, and of these, as many as 120,000 are blind due the disease.
The number of Americans with glaucoma is estimated to increase to 3.3 million
by the year 2020. Vision experts estimate that half of those affected may not
know they have it because symptoms may not occur during the early stages of
the disease.
Glaucoma is a leading cause
of blindness among African Americans and Hispanics in the United States . African
Americans experience glaucoma at a rate of three times that of Caucasians and
experience blindness four times more frequently. Between the ages of 45 and
64, glaucoma is fifteen times more likely to cause blindness in African Americans
than in Caucasians.
Vision experts estimate that half of those affected may not know they have
it because symptoms may not occur during the early stages of the disease. By
the time the patient notices something is wrong, the disease has already caused
considerable damage. Unfortunately, the vision lost to glaucoma is gone forever.
Medications and surgery can help slow the progression of the disease, but there
is no cure.
The 'About Glaucoma' section has a wealth of information including
the following:
The following topics can be found in this text-only section:
glaucoma, statistics, medical illustrations, research, symptoms, what's new,
healthy choices, risk factors, and Real Life Questions, new medications, genetic factors, diagnosis, and treatments.
If you have any research and science questions concerning glaucoma, please fill out the Real Life Questions form. We will answer some of the questions, and the responses will be posted in the What's New section every other Wednesday. We are not medical doctors and cannot make specific recommendations for treatment; only a physician can give personal medical advice. Your identity will not be posted with your question.
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your your browser cannot view frames. The same information is provided in
our glaucoma no-frames
site. The no-frames section is also designed to be accessible for person's
with disabilities.
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