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Guide to Common Eye Disorders
The retina (the inner lining at the back of the eyeball) contains sensitive chemicals that enable a person to perceive different colors. Because of inheritance or injury, some people have a deficiency in one or more of these chemicals and that reduces their ability to perceive and distinguish colors. The most common color vision problem is difficulty in distinguishing between red and green or between blue and green. Total color blindness-the inability to perceive any colors at all-is actually quite rare.
Hereditary color vision deficiency is the most common form of the disease, affecting 8% of males but just 0.1% of females. There is no cure for color vision deficiency, but people who have it can learn to navigate successfully in a colored world. Some patients find that wearing a special colored contact lens in their non-dominant eye, fit at the Eye Institute, makes a big difference in their ability to distinguish between red and green.
A team of researchers at the Eye Institute has recently located the gene that causes color blindness. They have also developed the most effective test available for mass-screening for color blindness in school children. (For more information, see color vision testing.)
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