Information About Glaucoma

Learn More About Glaucoma

Glaucoma is a condition that is often referred to as a “silent” disease, which means the patient will not know that they have glaucoma until permanent vision loss has occurred. For this reason, glaucoma is a horrific condition. There are many different types of glaucoma: primary open-angle glaucoma (the most common type), normal-tension glaucoma, pigmentary dispersion syndrome glaucoma, congenital glaucoma, and angle recession glaucoma with other types as well. 

Primary open-angle glaucoma is the most common type and is typically found in patients older in age. How does glaucoma cause vision loss? The main reason is related to eye pressure. When the pressure inside the eye increases, it puts stress on the optic nerve head. Over time, this stress leads to damage, and that damage leads to cell death which leads to vision loss. 

The key to the proper management of glaucoma is early detection. The sooner an optometrist can detect glaucoma in a patient, the better the prognosis. There are a number of different risk factors that go into the diagnosis: high eye pressure, corneal thickness, family history (it is genetic), visual field loss, and optic nerve head damage. The visual field loss can be monitored via an instrument called a visual field perimetry. This gives doctors a representation of the patient's actual visual field, and repeat fields test can show the progression of the disease or stabilization. Optic nerve head damage can be monitored via a dilated fundus exam and an OCT. An OCT will actually measure the thickness of the optic nerve head and can monitor the progression of glaucoma. Thinning of the nerve will indicate that damage has occurred. 

Luckily for patients, there are many options to help control glaucoma. For example, eye drops are designed to lower eye pressure to help with complicated surgeries and reduce intraocular pressure. Many times sufficient lowering of the pressure is achieved by simply putting a drop in the eyes at night. If that does not sufficiently control the pressure, then different drops are added. If additional drops still do not sufficiently control the pressure, then oftentimes, patients are referred to have surgery. Today, there are numerous types of surgery that can be done to control the pressure, and sometimes some laser surgeries are done as a first-line treatment option. 

With proper monitoring and compliance with medications, glaucoma is a condition that can be maintained without the patient having vision loss.

Are you worried you may have glaucoma? Get the answers you're looking for with a comprehensive eye exam performed by one of the fully trained optometrists at Weber Optiks. To schedule your exam, please contact us in Effingham, Altamont, or Mattoon.