Hold tight to the vision

Molly Ball

Saturday, Jan. 7, 2006 | 10:32 a.m.

Appointments for the free screenings, which will be offered from Jan. 23 to 28, can be made by calling (800) 393-7911 or online at www.visionsource.com. It is the first time Vision Source has offered the free screenings, which coincide with National Glaucoma Awareness Month.

Eye doctors call it the "silent thief": By the time your peripheral vision starts to shrink and you find out you have glaucoma, it is probably too late. There is probably nothing you can do to prevent total blindness.

But 90 percent of people who go blind from the disease could have prevented it by getting annual eye exams, researchers say.

"It's crucial that those who fall in a high-risk category for glaucoma receive a screening and continue to receive comprehensive eye exams annually," Las Vegas optometrist Dr. Dexter Morris said.

Morris and the other optometrists in the Vision Source network, which has 10 offices in the Las Vegas Valley, hope to encourage people to make glaucoma screening a part of their medical routines. Later this month, they will offer free exams to check for the disease.

"If you catch it in time, glaucoma is essentially a very preventable disease," Morris said. "You can treat it with just one or two (eye) drops a day. But in the late stages, you don't have a lot of options. It's like holding onto a cliff by the edge of your fingernails."

The doctors point out that blacks and Hispanics are at higher risk for the disease. With the valley's large and growing populations of these minorities, it's especially important for them to know to get checked, optometrists say.

Glaucoma is the name for the gradual eating away of the optic nerve that causes vision to deteriorate. In its early and middle stages, it can usually be treated successfully to prevent at least some vision loss.

But in those stages, it has no symptoms. It can only be detected by an exam that looks deep inside the eye at the nerve itself, a cable of about 1 million nerve fibers located at the back of the eyeball that connects the eye to the brain.

According to the Glaucoma Research Foundation, about 3 million Americans have glaucoma, but half of them don't know they have it. The disease is the second leading cause of blindness in the world, and the first among black Americans.

Anyone can get the disease, and about 1 in 10,000 babies are born with it. But those most at risk are blacks and Hispanics over 40, others over age 60, people with diabetes and people who have a family history of glaucoma.

Administering a screening recently, Morris looked deep into the eyes of Las Vegan Emma Agnew, a 50-year-old black woman.

He measured the pressure inside her eyes through a process called tonometry. Then he looked at the optic nerve with two tests, an ophthalmoscopy -- administered with special lenses mounted on a pair of glasses Morris wore -- and a visual field test, in which he shone a hand-held light into Agnew's eyes.

Agnew emerged from the three tests, the standard battery for glaucoma screening, slightly dazed but relieved to hear that her eyes looked fine.

"Many people are in the later stages by the time they come to us for a checkup," Morris said.

Molly Ball an be reached at 259-8814 or at molly@lasvegassun.com.