Retinal Detachment Fun Facts!

I needed to fill time. Sitting and doing nothing became difficult. After scouring the internet, this is what I came up with:

• Journalist, publisher and politician Joseph Pulitzer suffered from retinal detachment, going blind in his 40's, yet continuing to run his newspaper empire
• Boxer Sugar Ray Leonard suffered retinal detachment
• According to the American Academy of Opthalmology, doctors speculate that retinal detachment is what caused Teddy Roosevelt's blindness
• Michael Roux, Jr, chef at the famous restaurant Le Gavroche in London has suffered a retinal detachment twice
• While we're in Europe, former Prime Minister Gordon Brown has suffered that as well
• Race car drivers often suffer this condition: Bobby Wawak, "Big Daddy" Don Garlits
• Retinal detachment IS considered a medical emergency
• It is painless to have, but treatment is not so pain-free
• In a study from Japan in 1990- 1.84 million patients were analyzed: of that number, only 110 experienced retinal detachment associated with lattice degeneration, 72 from tears, and 38 from atrophic holes
• About 1 in 15,000 people in the U.S. experience a retinal detachment
• Highly myopic (near-sighted) individuals have a higher risk of developing it- in fact, 5% of this group will experience a detachment in their lifetime
• Your risk increases further if you have a family history of it, had cataract surgery, have lattice degeneration, or have an active lifestyle that puts you at a higher risk (i.e. TREE SURGEON. I had to put this in here, I found it on a website and had never heard that term before!)
• Your risk of developing a RD in the second eye increases once you've had it in the first, 15% of people will have that happen