NEW YORK -- Glaucoma is one of the leading causes of blindness in this country. Now, there's a new device that can help prevent complications that the disease can incur.

Normally, someone with glaucoma doesn't end up going to surgery. But Carlos Londono has had poorly controlled glaucoma for 17 years and it's left him nearly blind.

"Basically, I keep some sight in the right eye," Londono said. "But my left eye is almost gone."

Glaucoma starts out as elevated pressure inside the eyeball. Your eyes normally make fluid in the eye that circulates around and eventually drains near the edge of the cornea. But when that drainage is blocked, the increased pressure pushes on and damages the optic nerve at the back of the eye.

"The reason it's dangerous is that they don't feel it, they don't see it until the very end," said Dr. John Kung of Staten Island Ophtalmology. "So by the time you lose vision, its actually too late."

Usually, glaucoma can be controlled with drops or pills, and sometimes laser treatment is needed to reopen the drainage channels. But some people aren't helped by any of those treatments.

Now, a new device may help many keep their eyesight. Recently, the Food and Drug Administration approved the Ex-Press shunt, a tiny spike at the end of a needle. A simple 10-minute procedure inserts the shunt at the edge of the colored part of the eye.

The shunt is a microscopic conduit that drains excess fluid out of the eye and into the tissues surrounding the eye, where it can't do any harm.

The pressure reduction can increase a glaucoma patient's quality of life, and help those people from losing more vision, or from needing more medication.

Patients report that the shunt is not uncomfortable and that they don't even know it's there. The best candidate for the shunt is someone who's already failed other glaucoma treatments.

More than 2 million Americans have this silent disease.