Features

Nanny state intervention into people's personal lives is dangerous territory for any primary healthcare practitioner, but is it an area optometrists can afford not to tread? Optician's own straw poll, and the poll on our website, suggest many practices do not caution their patients against smoking.

Anyone in the profession who takes even the most passing interest in eye health issues cannot fail to be aware that there is a direct link between smoking and eye diseases such as AMD.

A recent rash of studies have highlighted that link and thrown up some interesting ways in which young people can be discouraged from smoking. Perhaps most pertinent among the studies is a survey of 250 clubbers between the ages of 16 and 18. It found young people feared blindness more than cancer.

So how do you stand as an eye care professional? What comeback might your smoking patients have in 30 years when they develop AMD? Is your protection of their personal choice an implication of your failure to protect their vision? And is 30 or 40 years just too far away?

Society has given up on the ideal of people taking responsibility for their own well-being. And, sadly, it is to the caring professions that the feckless and ignorant turn when seeking someone to blame for their own self-inflicted ailments.

Smoking can make you go blind. That message needs to be delivered to patients by their optometrist.

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