The physician who revolutionized screening methods for glaucoma nearly 20 years ago has patented a new device aimed at detecting glaucoma, a leading cause of blindness.
Steven Feldon, M.D., director of the Eye Institute at the University of Rochester Medical Center, has received U.S. patent # 6,776,756 for a new tonometer, a device that doctors and optometrists use to measure pressure inside the eye. When pressure becomes too high, the fibers of the optic nerve begin to die, and patients develop glaucoma, which can leave patients blind if left untreated or undetected in its early stages.
Feldon previously developed the Tono-pen™, a portable tonometer that doctors have used worldwide to measure eye pressure in millions of patients. The easy-to-use device, about the size of a pen, quickly became the most widely used portable tonometer for physicians, allowing a health professional with minimal training to do the test on a patient virtually anywhere. Doctors in emergency rooms and clinics typically carry the devices in their pockets as they move from patient to patient.
The new portable device, called the Newton™, keeps the portability of the Tonopen™ but boosts the accuracy of the device to a level previously seen only in bulky, more expensive systems. While the Tonopen™ is ideal for screening many patients, it’s used more as a screening tool to identify patients whose pressures initially appear high. These patients are then evaluated more thoroughly with other technologies. The high precision of the Newton™ makes further measurements unnecessary.
“We wanted an instrument that is as accurate as the device that has long been the gold standard, the Goldmann device, but with the portability of the Tonopen™,” says Feldon.
The Newton™, a two-ounce device about the size of a plump pen, is also sturdier than the Tonopen™, Feldon says.
Later this month doctors at the Doheny Eye Institute at the University of Southern California will begin testing the Newton™ on patients, comparing the device to more established technologies. Heavy scrutiny by doctors is standard for any new medical device; the Tonopen™, for instance, has been tested in more than 40 clinical trials.
Feldon’s company, Eye-Deas LLC of California, has just built the first Newtons™. The device has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration, and Marco Ophthalmics of Florida has licensed the technology.
About 3 million Americans have glaucoma, according to the Glaucoma Research Foundation. It’s the second leading cause of blindness in the United States and occurs mainly as people age. The disease is much more common among African-Americans, who are about 15 times more likely than Caucasians to go blind from glaucoma between the ages of 45 and 65.