What Is Glaucoma?

Glaucoma is an eye problem that damages your optic nerve of the eye. The optic nerve is responsible for transferring the visual information from your eyes to your brain. Glaucoma is ordinarily, though not always, the effect of abnormally high pressure inside your eye.

Over the time, this raised pressure can corrode your optic nerve tissue, which heads towards loss of vision or even sight blindness. If it is detected early, you may be able to prevent vision loss. This can be treated by Anti Glaucoma medications and Glaucoma surgery. Glaucoma surgery is quite common eye treatment.

Glaucoma Symptoms

The primary open-angle glaucoma is the most common type of glaucoma. A gradual loss in vision is only sign or symptoms for open-angle glaucoma. For this, it is essential to visit your ophthalmologist or eye specialist regularly, so that the changes in your vision can be monitored.

Acute-angle closure glaucoma, also known as narrow-angle glaucoma, is a medical emergency. It is recommended to see your doctor immediately if you experience any of the following symptoms:

Common Glaucoma symptoms includes

• Severe eye pain
• Nausea
• Vomiting
• Redness in your eye
• Sudden vision disturbances
• Seeing coloured rings around lights
• Sudden blurred vision

If you are facing any of the above mentioned, it is always safe to see a doctor in order to prevent further complications. Glaucoma surgery is not the only option. We will help you sort it out.

What Causes Glaucoma?

Clear fluid is continuously generated behind your eye. This fluid is called as aqueous humor. As this fluid is produced, it fills the front side of your eye. It then usually leaves your eyes from channels in your iris and cornea. If these channels get clogged or partly blocked the natural pressure in your eye is disturbed.

This pressure is called intraocular pressure (IOP), which may increase. With the increase in your IOP, your optic nerve might get damaged. This damage may result in losing your eyesight.

The reasons for the increase in your eye pressure are not always known. However, doctors believe one or more of these factors may play a role:

There are various concealed causes of Glaucoma. They include:

• Blocked or restricted drainage in your eye.
• Medications, such as corticosteroids.
• Poor or reduced blood flow to your optic nerve.
• High or elevated blood pressure.

Types of Glaucoma

There are five major types of Glaucoma. They are:

• Open-Angle (Chronic) Glaucoma

  According to the National Eye Institute (NEI), Open-Angle (Chronic) Glaucoma is the most common type of glaucoma. Gradual eyesight loss is the only sign or symptom of Open-angle, or Chronic Glaucoma. This loss of eyesight can be so slow that the vision can suffer irreversible damage if things go out of hands.

• Angle-Closure (Acute) Glaucoma

  Angle-closure glaucoma is an emergency situation and needs immediate medical attention. In this, the flow of your aqueous humor fluid is abruptly blocked, and rapid build-up of fluid occurs causing severe, painful increase in pressure. You should visit your doctor immediately if you begin undergoing such symptoms, such as severe pain, nausea, and blurred vision.

• Congenital Glaucoma

  Congenital glaucoma is usually hereditary. Some children have congenital glaucoma from birth. In this condition, these children have a defect in the angle of the eye obstructing normal fluid drainage. Congenital glaucoma usually presents itself with symptoms, such as cloudy eyes, excessive tearing, or sensitivity to light.

• Secondary Glaucoma

  Secondary glaucoma is a side effect of injury or any another eye condition, like cataracts or eye tumours. Medicines, such as corticosteroids, may also cause this type of glaucoma. Hardly, eye surgery can cause secondary glaucoma.

• Normal Tension Glaucoma

  Sometimes, the optic nerve gets damaged without any increased eye pressure. The cause of this is not known. However, extreme sensitivity or a lack of blood flow to your optic nerve may be a factor in this type of glaucoma.

Treatment for Glaucoma

The purpose of glaucoma treatment is to decrease IOP to prevent any eyesight loss. Usually, your doctor will start the treatment by prescribing eye drops. If those drops don’t work and more advanced treatment is needed, your doctor may recommend one of the following procedures:

Medications

Various medicines intended to decrease IOP are available. The medicines are available in the form of eye drops or tablets. Your doctor might direct you to take one of these types of medicines.

Glaucoma Surgery

If a blocked or partially obstructed channel is causing raised IOP, your doctor may recommend glaucoma surgery to create a drainage track for fluid or destroy the tissues that are responsible for the increased fluid. The treatment for angle-closure glaucoma is quite different.

The angle-closure glaucoma type of glaucoma is a medical emergency and requires immediate critical treatment to reduce eye pressure as swiftly as possible. Medicines are usually tried first, to reverse the angle closure, but this might also fail. A laser procedure termed laser peripheral iridotomy may also be done. This method creates small holes in your iris to allow increased fluid movement.

Don’t worry you are in safe hands. If you observe any slightest symptoms of this eye problem, please see the doctor as soon as possible. It may cost your eye sight if ignored.

1. Perimetry –

Our visual world is composed of images of colors, textures, edges and contrasts. In addition, these images may be moving or flickering. The goal of visual testing is to quantitate of these functions.

Traditionally we have tested visual function as visual acuity and visual field Color vision testing, flicker sensitivity, contrast sensitivity, pupillary responses and motion testing are some of the other methods of quantitating vision.

Perimetry is the systematic measurement of visual field function. The two most commonly used types of perimetry are Goldmann kinetic perimetry and threshold static automated perimetry. With threshold static automated perimetry, a computer program is selected. This is accomplished by keeping the size and location of a target constant and varying the brightness until the dimmest target the patient can see at each of the test locations is found. These maps of visual sensitivity, made by either of these methods, are very important in diagnosing diseases of the visual system. Different patterns of visual loss are found with diseases of the eye, optic nerve central nervous system.

2. Pachymetry-

The instrument used for this purpose is known as a pachymeter. pachymeters are devices that display the thickness of the cornea, when the ultrasonic transducer touches the cornea. Newer generations of ultrasonic pachymeters work by way of Corneal Waveform (CWF). Using this technology the user can capture an ultra-high definition echogram of the cornea.

3. Gonioscopy-

Gonioscopy is performed during the eye exam to evaluate the internal drainage system of the eye, also referred to as the anterior chamber angle. This is the location where fluid inside the eye (aqueous humor) drains out of the eye and into the venous system. A special contact lens prism placed on the surface of the eye allows visualization of the angle and drainage system.

4. Trabeculectomy /Ologen-

Trabeculectomy is the gold standard procedure for the surgical treatment of glaucoma. Antimetabolites such as mitomycin-C (MMC)are widely used as an adjunctive during surgery to prevent scarring of the bleb.

Recently, a biodegradable porous collagen-glycosaminoglycan copolymer matrix implant (Ologen), has become available for glaucoma surgery. prospective intervention pilot study to determine the degree of intraocular pressure (IOP) lowering of trabeculectomy with Ologen implantation in comparison to trabeculectomy with MMC. hypothesis that trabeculectomy with Ologen will be a safer procedure than trabeculectomy with MMC, but probably at the cost of a less potent IOP lowering.