To understand how
glaucoma
affects your eyes, it is important to understand how your eye sees. Light rays enter
the eye through the clear cornea, then through the pupil and the lens. These light rays are focused on the retina,
a light sensitive tissue lining the back of the eye. The
optic nerve
is connected to the retina and is made up of
many nerve fibers. Signals from the retina are sent through the optic nerve to the brain where they are interpreted
as the images as we see.
In the healthy eye a clear liquid called aqueous humor circulates inside the front portion of the eye. To maintain a
constant healthy eye pressure, your eye continually produces a small amount of aqueous humor and an equal amount of
this fluid flows out of the eye through a microscope drain called a trabecular meshwork in the drainage angle.