New Eye Health Spanish Website

The American Academy of Ophthalmology has launched OjosSanos, a Spanish-language version of its EyeSmart website, in order to empower Latinos with accurate eye health information. The new site is in response to ongoing research.The Los Angeles Latino Eye Study (LALES), the first effort to track eye disease incidence among Latinos, found that Hispanics had higher rates of developing visual impairment, blindness, diabetic eye disease, and cataracts than non-Hispanic whites. The risk for glaucoma in Latinos is four times higher than it is in whites, and three times higher in Latinos who have siblings with glaucoma compared to those without any family history of glaucoma. Most importantly, the study found 75 percent of the Latinos with glaucoma were unaware of their eye disease, and almost half of all Latinos with diabetes had diabetic retinopathy. Read more.