Glaucoma is sometimes called the silent thief because it can slowly
steal your sight before you realize anything is wrong, beginning
with your peripheral vision. It's a leading cause of vision loss and blindness.
In order to understand how glaucoma affects the eye
watch a video explaining how the eye works or
watch a video on how the eye sees.
The most common form of glaucoma,
primary open-angle glaucoma,
develops gradually,
giving no warning signs. Many people aren't even aware they have an eye problem
until their vision is extensively compromised.
Glaucoma is a disease leading to progressive damage of the
optic nerve,
usually accompanied by an abnormally high
pressure inside your eyeball. Blind spots develop in your visual field when the
optic nerve
is damaged, usually starting with your peripheral (side) vision. If
left untreated, glaucoma may lead to blindness in both eyes.
Fortunately, medical advances have made it easier to diagnose and treat glaucoma.
If detected and treated early, many people maintain good central vision.
Early detection is achieved with a dilated fundus examination, and other instruments
such as a Humphrey Visual Field (HVF),
Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT),
and tonometry.
Treatment includes topical medication (drops) or
laser surgery for open-angle glaucoma,
trabeculectomy (building a new drain), laser iridotomy,
or Seton Surgery
or placement of tubes in your eye to allow drainage of fluids.
Currently there is no cure for glaucoma, but there are eye drops that help in the treatment of it.
Eye drops
are used to help regulate the flow of fluid in or out of the eye. These eye drops are an important step in
helping suffers of glaucoma so it is important that eye drops are administered properly. Watch this short
video on how to correctly apply the eye drops in order to minimize the amount of the eye drop medication wasted
on application attempts.
If you would like to learn more about glaucoma please feel free to
read A Patient's Guide to Glaucoma online by
By Young H Kwon, MD, PhD; John H Fingert, MD, PhD; and Emily C Greenlee, MD or you can purchase the
hard copy as well.
If you have glaucoma please make an appointment with an Eye Doctor
for a complete glaucoma workup.