Two new studies conducted in the United States explore the relationship between eye problems and the risk of suffering from dementia or cardiovascular disease respectively. According to the results, eye exams in adults could help to detect these conditions at an early stage so that they can be remedied as soon as possible.
This is not the first time there has been discussion of the link between vision loss and cognitive impairment, or of how eye exams could help to detect diseases such as Alzheimer’s. This new study, which involved 1,200 people, provides evidence for this link.
To carry out this study, the researchers monitored the vision of the adults with dementia for 16 years, checking for three different types of vision loss. They also measured the adults’ language, memory, attention and several measures of mental agility, including their ability to plan, pay attention, remember instructions and perform multiple tasks at once.
According to the results of the study, people with the worst visual acuity had an increased risk of language and memory impairment. Likewise, those who struggled to detect objects placed on similarly coloured backgrounds, that is, contrast sensitivity, had a higher risk of language, memory, attention and visuospatial impairment. Finally, the study showed that people with poor depth perception were at greater risk of language and memory impairment. However, the study does not clarify whether it is the loss of vision that causes dementia or the dementia that causes loss of vision.
Therefore, further studies in this direction are needed to determine how these conditions are related to each other. What is clear, nevertheless, is the importance of performing regular ophthalmological exams for the elderly.
According to another study, ophthalmologists can also detect signs of cardiovascular disease during an eye exam. This is because people with cardiovascular disease may have signs of ocular stroke in the retina.
Ocular strokes occur when the eye suffers a total or partial occlusion of one of the retinal arteries or veins, which causes the cells to die. This leaves some marks that correspond to a thinning of the damaged retina, which can be detected by the ophthalmologist through an optical coherence tomography (OCT). According to this study, these injuries may be present in small amounts in healthy people. However, people with cardiovascular disease tend to have a much higher number of such lesions. The researchers arrived at these results by reviewing the medical records of 84 people with cardiovascular disease and 76 healthy people, all of whom had undergone an optical coherence tomography.
The eyes are the only part of the body where a doctor can see blood vessels in real time, as well as nerves and connecting tissue, without the need for an invasive procedure. That’s why ophthalmologists can be the first to detect health problems such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol and vascular accidents among others.
As this study points out, ophthalmologists refer patients to a cardiologist if they detect ocular strokes on an ocular coherence tomography, especially if the patient has not undergone a complete medical exam, and even if they do not have a family history of cardiovascular disease.
System used to obtain high resolution scan images of the tissues through laser. It is specially useful to study macular diseases and the optic disc.
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