Glaucoma and cigarette smoking: a review of narrative reviews

Background: Glaucoma is an optic neuropathy associated with visual field changes for which high intra-ocular pressure is a major risk factor. Emerging research indicates that modifiable factors, among which the cigarette smoke, besides IOP may be associated with the presence of glaucoma. Objective: The objective of the study was to perform a review of narrative reviews to examine on the relationship between cigarette smoking and glaucoma. Methods: The results of all narrative reviews in the scientific literature about glaucoma and tobacco smoking were analyzed. A quality assessment was performed according to an easy and convenient tool for the quality assessment of narrative reviews for systematic reviews (International Narrative Systematic assessment) the INSA tool. Literature searches were performed using PubMed. Results: 20 studies about relation between glaucoma and smoke were collected, no restriction language was applied. 15 of these studies have been excluded. We selected among them 5 reviews. With the INSA tool we measured the quality of the 5 selected narrative reviews. Studies that had a highest score with the INSA tool were two: A. Coleman et al. “Risk Factors for Glaucoma Needing More Attention” and R. Salowe et al. “Primary Open-Angle Glaucoma in Individuals of African Descent: A Review of Risk Factors”. Conclusion: The narrative reviews analyzed underline that there is no definitive association between cigarette smoking

Improving Roadside Design to Forgive Human Errors

AbstractAccidents involving roadsides are typically extremely “unforgiving”. Even though the roadside design can affect only marginally the actual number of accidents occurring on a road, the severity of crashes can be considerably reduced if roadsides are designed to be more “forgiving”.Within the IRDES project a practical and uniform guideline that allows the road designer to improve the forgivingness of the roadside and a practical tool for assessing the effectiveness of applying a given roadside treatment have been produced for the following set of roadside features: barrier terminals; shoulder rumble strips; forgiving support structures for road equipment; shoulder width