Eye See A Contact Lens That Will Help Glaucoma Have you ever gone to the eye doctor

and had to face the challenge of keeping your eye open while air is puffed into it? This test that eye doctors conduct is called an intraocular tonometry test, and works by rapidly pulsing air into your eye. It tests for elevation of the fluid pressure in the eye, which can lead to optic nerve damage, and consequently, loss of vision. The medical term for the condition of increased pressure inside the eye causing optic nerve damage is called Glaucoma. You may not have any symptoms with this elevation in pressure, but still have damage to the optic nerve. When pressure inside the eye increases, blind spots in peripheral areas of vision may occur. Glaucoma has often been called The Silent Thief of Sight because you dont develop any symptoms until it is too late, and your vision is gone. If it is detected early, it can be prevented with medical and surgical treatments. When my Grandpa was 65 years old, he was tested for glaucoma, and it was concluded that his ocular pressure was elevated at 28 mm Hg; the normal intraocular pressure is under 14 mm Hg. The doctors established that my grandpa was in a group of 10% - 15% of people in the world who have high ocular pressure but dont develop glaucoma. However, eventually, the doctors recommend he take drops to treat the elevated eye pressure. He found it to be very cumbersome. Being an elderly person, it has not been easy to keep a steady hand and apply one drop in the corner of each eye. One of the biggest challenges in treating Glaucoma is that patients often dont take their medications (eye drops). However, there have been some recent innovations using contact lenses to deliver the Glaucoma medication. A group of researchers from Harvard, MIT, and Boston Childrens Hospital have recently developed a contact lens that releases latanoprost, an effective Glaucoma medicine. These contact lenses were created by encapsulating latanoprost films in methafilcon, a polymer. Methafilcon is a copolymer of hydroxyethyl methacrylate and methyl methacrylate. Copolymer means that it was formed by two monomers of two different species. The polymerization process of methafilcon is created by ultraviolet radiation. The methafilcon polymer is composed of carbons, hydrogens, and oxygens and an R group. Methafilcon is also a hydrogel. Hydrogels are water swollen, cross-linked polymer structures that are used in these special contact lenses to release latanoprost. Hydrogels have a degree of flexibility very similar to natural human tissue due to their significant water content. For example, hydrogels are used in disposable diapers where they absorb a lot of fluid. The polymer chains of

chemical hydrogels are connected by permanent covalent bonds. A covalent bond is characterized by the sharing of pairs of electrons between atoms. In general, eye drops are an inefficient method of drug delivery that has notoriously poor patient adherence. This contact lens design can potentially be used as a treatment for glaucoma and as a platform for other ocular drug delivery applications, said Joseph Ciolino, M.D, Mass. Eye and Ear cornea specialist. If this turns out to be promising there is potential to administer other types of eye medicines by using the contact lens as the transporter. It is exciting to think about the possibilities that polymers can be used to deliver medications.

Normal Vision

The Vision of Someone With Glaucoma Pictures are from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glaucoma