In the Hands of Kids, Non-Powdered Weapons Are Lethal

"Researchers at a Dallas children's hospital aim to show that nonpowder firearms such as airsoft, BB, and paintball guns should not be viewed as toys, but rather powerful weapons causing increasingly severe and sometimes life-threatening injuries in pediatric patients," observes Science Daily. "A new study being presented at the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Conference and Exhibition in Washington, DC, looked at medical records of patients treated at Children's Medical Center Dallas after being injured by nonpowder guns between 2010 and 2013. Of the 176 patients studied, 87 percent were male and 30 percent were under 10 years of age, said lead researcher Nina Mizuki Fitzgerald, MD, FAAP, a pediatric emergency medicine fellow at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. The majority of injuries were unintentional." Read more.

Canada's Health Department Approves Mini-Telescope for AMD Patients

VisionCare Ophthalmic Technologies, Inc., has received a Health Canada Medical Device License  to market in Canada its implantable miniature telescope developed by Dr. Isaac Lipshitz in Canada. The telescope implant can help improve vision of patients with end-stage age-related macular degeneration (AMD).Smaller than a pea, the telescope implant uses micro-optical technology to magnify images which would normally be seen in one's "straight ahead" or central, vision. The images are projected onto the healthy portion of the retina. Read more. Read more.

Frequent Headaches in Children Do Not Indicate Need for Eyewear, Says Study

"A new study provides the first clear evidence that vision or eye problems are rarely the cause of recurring headaches in children, even if the headaches usually strike while the child is doing schoolwork or other visual tasks," says Science Daily. "Many parents assume that frequent headaches mean their child needs glasses, so they ask their doctor to refer their child for an eye exam. This study was conducted by pediatric ophthalmologists who wanted to find reliable answers for parents, family doctors and pediatricians facing this common health question." Read more.

Field Hockey Eye Injuries Down

"Fewer high school field hockey players get head and face injuries when they're required to don protective eyewear, according to a new comparison of states with and without those policies in effect," according to Yahoo! News. "Researchers were looking into worries that the equipment, while preventing eye injuries, might encourage players to get more physical and violent overall - which they termed "the gladiator effect" - leading to an increase in injuries....However that did not appear to be the case, and concussion rates, for example, were similar in states where eyewear was and was not required during the study." Read more.

Childhood Obesity Can Lead to Blindness

"Children who are overweight or obese -- particularly older, non-Hispanic white girls -- are more likely to have a neurological disorder known as idiopathic intracranial hypertension, a rare condition that can result in blindness, according to a new Kaiser Permanente study published in The Journal of Pediatrics," according to a post on Medical News Today. "In a cross-sectional, population-based study of 900,000 children ages 2-19 years old, researchers found 78 cases of pediatric idiopathic intracranial hypertension. The condition occurred most frequently in overweight or obese, non-Hispanic white teenage girls - 85 percent of the children with IIH were girls 11-19, nearly half were non-Hispanic white, and 73 percent were overweight or obese." Read more.

Helping the Hungry and Those in Eye Care Need

To help Americans stay healthy and to help the hungry, Jeffrey Gold, M.D., and the staff of Liberty Vision are sponsoring a different type of food drive. People do not bring food to Liberty Vision. Rather they sign up for the food drive's comprehensive eye exam, which costs them only $39, significantly less than the regular rate of $150. Dr. Gold's press release notes that "every penny of the $39 will be donated to the Connecticut Food Bank." Read more.