(PreserveMacForte.com) On the heels of International Age-related Macular Degeneration (AMD) Awareness Week, CNIB is taking the time to remind both doctors and patients that eye health is something that should be front-of-mind 12 months of the year, reported PhysBizTech.
According to the article, CNIB, a Canadian charity previously called Canadian National Institute for the Blind, doesn’t want eye-wellness efforts to die off now that another Awareness Week has come and gone.
Dr. Keith D. Gordon, CNIB’s vice president of research and adjunct professor with the University of Toronto’s Department of Ophthalmology and Vision Sciences, said in the article that AMD is the primary cause of vision loss on the continent. He added that it’s not out of the realm of possibility for persons to have AMD without actually knowing it.
Furthermore, the article cited CNIB experts as saying that the primary cause of vision loss among Canadians is AMD. In fact, around 1 million Canadians have the blindness-causing eye condition, and that number could very well double within the next quarter-century.
Dr. Gordon added in the article that a study by both CNIB and the Canadian Ophthalmological Society discovered that AMD was an almost $1.9 billion dollar problem in Canada in 2007 dollars. He explained that this tally included direct health costs of $1.1 billion and indirect costs of CAD 786 million.
Although AMD is more common among Caucasian populations, it is not a minor concern in other nations, said Dr. Gordon, who added that AMD Alliance is proactively spreading the word about the eye condition globally. He added that AMD Alliance International projected that AMD costs $300 billion globally, which suggests that more attention needs to be paid to educating about the problem.
Dr. Gordon provided the following advice for physicians seeking to alert their patients about AMD risks:
- Advise patients to give up smoking.
- Recommend that patients come in for regular eye exams, particularly if these patients have a family history of AMD.
- Advise patients to adopt a healthy lifestyle and get regular exercise.
- Recommend that patients use sunglasses to safeguard their eyes form ultra violet rays.
- Encourage patients to inform their associates about AMD.