The world celebrates the World Glaucoma Week, or glaucoma, or glaucoma in the eye, which continues until March 13th, which is a global initiative of the World Glaucoma Society. What leads to a gradual loss of vision, in this report we learn about glaucoma, its symptoms and complications, according to the "Medicine net" site.
What is glaucoma?
Glaucoma is a disease that affects the main nerve of vision and is called the optic nerve. The optic nerve receives nerve impulses generated by light from the retina and transmits them to the brain, where we recognize those electrical signals as vision.
Glaucoma is characterized by a specific pattern of progressive damage to the optic nerve that generally begins with a slight loss of side vision (peripheral vision).
If glaucoma is not diagnosed and treated, it may progress to central vision loss and blindness.
Glaucoma is usually associated, but not always, with high pressure in the eye (intraocular pressure). In general, high intraocular pressure leads to damage to the optic nerve. In some cases, glaucoma may occur in the presence of normal pressure of the eye. This type of glaucoma is thought to be caused by poor regulation of blood flow to the optic nerve.
How common is glaucoma?
Worldwide, glaucoma is the second leading cause of irreversible blindness. In fact, there are as many as 6 million people who are blind in both eyes from this disease.
In the United States alone, according to one estimate, more than 3 million people have glaucoma, up to half of those with glaucoma may not know they have the disease.
The reason they are unaware of the disease is because glaucoma does not initially cause symptoms, and the loss of side vision (peripheral vision) usually goes unrecognized.
Q: What are the symptoms and signs of glaucoma?
Patients with open-angle glaucoma and chronic angle-closure glaucoma generally have no symptoms early in the course of the disease.
Visual field loss (loss of side vision) is not a symptom until late in the course of the disease.
Patients with fluctuating levels of intraocular pressure rarely experience blurred vision and see halos around lights, especially in the morning.
On the other hand, the symptoms of acute angle-closure are often very severe with the rapid onset of severe eye pain, headache, nausea, vomiting, and blurred vision.
Sometimes nausea and vomiting exceed the eye symptoms to the point where the eye cause is not taken into account when trying to make a diagnosis.
The eyes of patients with open-angle or chronic angle-closure glaucoma may appear normal in the mirror, or for family or friends.
Some patients develop slight redness in the eyes due to chronic use of eye drops.
The ophthalmologist, upon examining the patient, may find elevated intraocular pressure, optic nerve abnormalities, or visual field loss as well as other less common signs.
The eyes of patients with acute angle-closure glaucoma will appear red, and the pupils may be large and unresponsive to light.
The cornea may appear cloudy to the naked eye. The ophthalmologist will usually find a decrease in visual acuity, corneal swelling, and an increase in eye pressure.
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