African American Blindness

Introduction

Vision is one of our most valuable sensory modalities, it is the way that we as individuals identify our surroundings and ourselves. African American children at a young age are more susceptible to having eye problems mainly because of the fact that they are still children and still exploring their surroundings. It is estimated that around 500,000 children become blind each year but that number is expected to grow. In developing countries that statistic is even worse as around 60 percent of individuals die within a year of becoming blinded (NIH, et al, 2015). This brings about the question as to what are the true causes of these blindness’s and why is it more prevalent in African American males here in the United States

First we have to understand the various types of blindness that is prevalent in the United States. We first look at glaucoma. According to the National Institute of Health, “Glaucoma damages the eye 's optic nerve and is a leading cause of blindness. It usually happens when the fluid pressure inside the eyes slowly rises, damaging the optic nerve. Often there are no symptoms at first, but a comprehensive eye exam can detect the signs. About 2.3 million Americans suffer from glaucoma. It is estimated that an additional 2 million have the disease but don 't know it” (NIH et al, 2015).

We have to look at how racial differences that impact blindness. We also have to see the relationship that visual imparement has on heath related quality of life. A study,” Visual field defects and vision-specific health related quality of life in African American and whites with glaucoma”(Ringsdorf et al 2006). This study showed that there was a difference in African American and whites when it came to general health and ocular pain in which African americans had a slightly higher

Studies from the Glaucoma research foundation has found that siblings of persons diagnosed with glaucoma have nearly a 10-fold increased risk of having glaucoma when compared to siblings of persons without glaucoma. This means that a 65 year old sibling of a European-derived person has about a 10% chance of having glaucoma, while a 65 year old sibling of an African American has nearly a 20% chance of having glaucoma. Clearly brothers and sisters of patients with glaucoma can benefit from regular eye examinations with special attention to careful screening for glaucoma.” (Glaucoma Research Foundation, et al, 2015). This is interesting in the sense that it makes you wonder why this statistic is the way that it is. Also it makes you wonder if there are racial differences that influence the prevalence of such diseases on African American