Fighting Glaucoma with Sensirion’s Liquid Flow Meters

The second leading cause of visual impairment in all areas of the world is glaucoma according to the WHO. It is a group of eye diseases which results in damage to the optic nerve, in vision loss and finally leads to blindness. To treat it, a most effective means is to temporarily lower the fluid pressure in the eye (called intraocular pressure) by using medication, usually eye drops. Although effective for many patients, they often have drawbacks and the more successful ones have been around for already 20 years. A specialized ophthalmology research group at the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research, Cambridge, MA, United States has designed a compact and scalable perfusion system which enables a compound prescreening of novel glaucoma medications. This has been achieved by incorporating Sensirion's liquid flow meters (type LG16-0430D) into the system. Their results have been presented during this year's conference of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology, Inc. (ARVO). Read the full abstract.

Research on intraocular pressure by perfusion measurements with Sensirion's liquid flow sensors was pioneered by the Imperial College in London, UK. In a recent publication flow meters of the SLG series have been used to precisely measure tiny flow rates in the nanoliter per minute range.