Glaucoma Can Silently Lead to Blindness
Glaucoma is one of the most common eye diseases in the United States and worldwide. If you know facts about glaucoma, you can help yourself decrease the vision-threatening potential of the disease.
What is Glaucoma?
Glaucoma is a group of diseases that can damage the eye’s optic nerve. This may result in vision loss and ultimately blindness if left untreated. Glaucoma occurs when normal fluid pressure inside the eye (intraocular pressure) rises. Although there are various forms of glaucoma, nearly 90% of patients with this disease have primary open-angle glaucoma.
Who Can Get Glaucoma?
Over two million people in the United States have glaucoma. While anyone can be susceptible to developing this disease, some populations are much more likely to have glaucoma.
Who is at Risk for Glaucoma?
- Individuals with a family history of glaucoma
- Older adults
- African Americans are three times more likely than Caucasians to have glaucoma
- African Americans experience blindness from this disease four times more than other races
In addition to these risk factors, a comprehensive eye examination with dilating drops can reveal other possibly risk factors, such as elevated eye pressure and abnormal optic nerve appearance.
What are the Symptoms for Glaucoma?
At first, there are no symptoms associated with glaucoma. As a result, it’s often been characterized as a “silent disease.”
Most of the time, with glaucoma patients, the eye appears normal and the individual experiences no pain. Vision remains unaffected until much later in the disease.
If glaucoma remains undiagnosed or untreated, peripheral (side) vision is affected first. Over time, the patient’s central (straight ahead vision) will also decrease, eventually leading to no vision at all.
How Do You Detect Glaucoma?
Since most patients with glaucoma have no symptoms, the disease can only be detected by having routine eye examinations. The eye exam must include eye pressure checks and the use of eye drops to dilate a patient’s pupil in order to examine the back of the eye.
How is Glaucoma Treated?
When first diagnosed, glaucoma is most often treated with eye drops to lower intraocular pressure (IOP). The drops act to reduce fluid production in the eye or help drain fluid from the eye. These drops may need to be taken several times a day. At times, more than one type of drop is required to control the eye pressure. If the eye pressure cannot be adequately controlled with eye drops, laser or surgical treatments may be necessary.
