Blindness among older Americans, much of it preventable, will double during the next 35 years if the nation doesn't find better ways to arrest eye disease among aging Baby Boomers, a researcher says.
"If we don't try to do something different, we're going to be in big trouble," said James M. Tielsch, an associate professor in international health and ophthalmology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.Tielsch presented his projections on aging and blindness Saturday at the annual meeting of Prevent Blindness America, the nonprofit group previously known as the National Society to Prevent Blindness.
An estimated 860,000 Americans over age 40 were legally blind in both eyes in 1990, and that number will increase to 1.7 million by the year 2035 at current rates of aging and diagnosis of aging-related eye diseases, Tielsch said.
"This is all driven by the wave of Baby Boomers moving through the older years . . . into the high-risk years for vision loss," Tielsch said.
Four diseases cause most of the blindness and severe vision loss among aging Americans, who include 76 million Baby Boomers.
The leading cause is age-related macular degeneration, a painless deterioration of vision caused by a breakdown of tissues at the back of the eye. The others are cataracts, a clouding of the eye's lens; glaucoma, damage caused by a buildup of fluid pressure inside the eyeball; and diabetic eye disease caused by leakage of blood and fluid in the light-sensitive part of the eye called the retina.
Many cases of all four could be caught and cured or controlled through regular eye examinations, which Americans tend to neglect, Tielsch said.
The nation also needs to continue aggressive research into eye diseases and treatments, he said.
Recent efforts have yielded important breakthroughs, such as eye drops to control glaucoma, he said. Previously, the only medicine for glaucoma had to be ingested, often causing potentially serious side-effects ranging from shortness of breath to heart problems, he said.
"If we could delay the onset (of aging-related eye diseases) by just 15 years, we could get rid of a lot of these problems because frankly more people would be dying before they had significant vision loss as a result of these problems," he said.
Dr. Eve J. Higginbotham, a researcher who is not associated with Tielsch but also attended the conference, said Tielsch's projections are "right on target."
"It's amazing that in this nation of plenty we have rate of blindness that rivals blindness in developing countries," said Higginbotham, chair of ophthalmology at the University of Maryland at Baltimore.