For over 40 years the standard surgical treatment for glaucoma was a procedure called a trabeculectomy.

In a trabeculectomy the ophthalmic surgeon would make a hole in the wall of eye to allow fluid from the inside of the eye to flow out of the eye and then get resorbed by the blood vessels in the conjunctiva (the mucous membrane that covers the white part of the eye).

This surgery often resulted in a large decrease in the Intraocular Pressure (IOP). Reducing the IOP is the goal of glaucoma surgery because multiple studies on glaucoma show that if you can reduce the pressure in glaucoma the progression of the disease slows.

The problem with trabeculectomy is although it frequently lowers the pressure it also has a fairly high complication and/or failure rate. This led to some reluctance to perform the procedure unless the glaucoma was severe, or the pressure was very high. As a result of those issues there has been a search during the last 40 years for something that had a...

1. Vision is so important to humans that almost half of your brain’s capacity is dedicated to visual perception.

2. The most active muscles in your body are the muscles that move your eyes.

3. The surface tissue of your cornea (the epithelium) is one of the quickest-healing tissues in your body. The entire corneal surface can turn over every 7 days.

4. Your eyes can get sunburned. It is called photokeratitis and it can make the corneal epithelium slough off just like your skin peels after a sunburn.

5. Ommatophobia is the fear of eyes.

6. You blink on average about 15 to 20 times per minute. That blink rate may decrease by 50% when you are doing a visually demanding task like reading or working on a computer – and that’s one reason those tasks can lead to more dry-eye symptoms.

7. Your retinas see the world upside down, but your brain flips the image around for you.

8. If you are farsighted (hyperopia) your eye is short, and if you are shortsighted (myopia)...