Sure, aging can affect your eyes — but vision loss is not the norm. For 2020: Year of the Eye, the American Academy of Ophthalmology presents 20 common changes to vision and eye health that aging adults should watch for, and the best ways to protect your sight.
Pediatric ophthalmologists are a rarity in medicine. There are only about a thousand of them to serve America’s 75 million children. And as other physicians fled private practice for hospitals or have been gobbled up by private equity firms, most pediatric ophthalmologists remain in private practice. Unfortunately, the factors that make the specialty uncommon have also made pediatric ophthalmologists and their patients uncommonly vulnerable to the ravages of the COVID-19 shutdown.
But with wellness visits declining during the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19), many children’s eyes may go unchecked. This could delay the diagnosis and treatment of childhood eye conditions — particularly for children from disadvantaged households, who were already prone to missing vision screens before the pandemic.
It may be one of the more innocuous problems of the coronavirus pandemic, but it’s a nuisance nonetheless: fogged-up eyewear. It happens when warm breath escapes from the top of your mask and lands on the cooler surface of your lens.
Are those watery eyes and stuffy nose symptoms of the new coronavirus or allergies? “This time of year is a challenge for people with allergies, and now more so with COVID fears,” says James M. Huffman, MD, an ophthalmologist in central Kentucky. “Symptoms in people infected with coronavirus can differ from person to person based on their illness. Having that varying information out there can be confusing if you’re not sure what you should be looking for.”
When someone who has coronavirus coughs, sneezes, or talks, virus particles can spray from their mouth or nose onto your face. You are likely to breathe these tiny droplets in through your mouth or nose. But the droplets can also enter your body through your eyes. You can also become infected by touching your eyes after touching something that has the virus on it.
Here’s why it’s important to protect your eyes during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, and five ways you can help yourself and others.
Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the most common cause of vision loss and blindness in Americans over age 50, affecting about 2.1 million people nationwide. Early diagnosis and treatment are the keys to preventing vision loss. During February, the American Academy of Ophthalmology is educating the public about the facts on AMD.
You may have had trouble sleeping after being at the screen of your phone or other digital devices just before going to bed. Blue light – either from the sun or screens we use – we wake up and stimulates. This also means that too much exposure to blue light for late night phone screens, tablets or computers can disrupt our ability to sleep.
The American Academy of Ophthalmology urges parents to avoid buying toys that can cause serious eye injuries, even blindness. According to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission an estimated 251,700 toy-related injuries were treated in U.S. hospital emergency rooms in 2017. Almost half of those incidents were injuries to the head. Unfortunately, most of these injuries happen to children under age 15. It’s important to think about the safety of any gift you’re giving, especially if it’s a gift for a child.
