Kara Fields

Eye Health: Cataracts

Cataracts are one of the most common eye diseases, affecting roughly 60% of people over the age of 60. More than 1.5 million cataract surgeries are performed in the United States each year. Cataracts are changes in clarity of the natural lens inside the eye that gradually degrade visual quality. Having cataracts is often compared to looking through a foggy windshield of a car or through a dirty lens of a camera.

New York area medical student, Kara Fields joins the show to discuss cataracts; what are they, who do they affect and her research project funded by Fight for Sight that could just make huge strides in the fight against cataracts!

A New York City native, Kara Fields graduated from Barnard College in May 2010. She will begin medical school this fall at Columbia University as a first year medical student at the Mailman School of Public Health. Kara has been selected as a 2010 Fight for Sight Summer Student Fellowship grant that will fund her research project on genetic links to cataracts. In her research study, she will be looking at the relationship between abnormalities of multiple genes and their susceptibility to the development of eye diseases such as cataracts and hopes to use the likelihood of radiation cataract formation as a model for how certain gene defects affect the eye’s sensitivity to DNA-damaging environmental insults. In addition to her Fight for Sight research grant, Kara is also the recipient of Fight for Sight’s 2010 Basil V. Worgul Lens Research Fellowship award. The Basil V. Worgul Lens Research Fellowship award is named in memory of Basil Worgul, who received a Fight for Sight award when he was at the University of Vermont in 1972 and has served as a mentor to Fight for Sight fellows while at Columbia University.

Dr. Derrick DeSilva

8 / 23 / 2010