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Saturday, July 26, 2025

World Glaucoma Week: Understanding Glaucoma

by

Trinidad Eye Health Hospital
1961 days ago
20200313

World Glau­co­ma Week (March 8-14) aims to high­light the plight of glau­co­ma which is com­mon­ly called “The Silent Thief” as it can sud­den­ly and with­out symp­toms cause ir­re­versible vi­sion loss or blind­ness by dam­ag­ing the op­tic nerve, most times due to in­creased eye pres­sure.

Ini­tial­ly, there are usu­al­ly no dis­cernible symp­toms and many peo­ple are un­aware that they even have glau­co­ma. Vi­sion is usu­al­ly lost slow­ly over time, par­tic­u­lar­ly the side/pe­riph­er­al vi­sion or vi­sion clos­est to your nose. Be­cause of this very slow loss, it can be dif­fi­cult to even tell if your vi­sion is chang­ing.

As the dis­ease pro­gress­es, you may be­gin to no­tice that you could no longer see things off to the sides. Left un­treat­ed, glau­co­ma can even­tu­al­ly cause to­tal blind­ness.

Some forms of glau­co­ma can some­times have symp­toms. These symp­toms will usu­al­ly be sud­den and se­vere and in­clude:

•Blurred vi­sion

•Se­vere eye pain

•Headache

•Rain­bow haloes

•Nau­sea and vom­it­ing

Any­one can get glau­co­ma, how­ev­er the risk in­creas­es if you are over the age of 50 or have a fam­i­ly his­to­ry of glau­co­ma. It is ad­vised that since some forms of glau­co­ma are hered­i­tary, you should have a di­lat­ed eye ex­am year­ly to en­sure ear­ly di­ag­no­sis.

A Glau­co­ma as­sess­ment screen­ing usu­al­ly in­cludes a min­i­mum of four pain­less tests. These are:

Test of eye pres­sure —this is usu­al­ly a stan­dard test done be­fore most eye ex­am­i­na­tions

OCT glau­co­ma—this test us­es non-in­va­sive light waves to take cross-sec­tion pic­tures

Vi­su­al Field Test- this test is used to pro­duce a map of your field of vi­sion to de­ter­mine whether your vi­sion has been af­fect­ed by glau­co­ma.

Pachym­e­try— this is a quick and sim­ple test to mea­sure the thick­ness of your cornea

While glau­co­ma is a very se­ri­ous dis­ease, treat­ment is usu­al­ly sim­ple and gen­er­al­ly works well. There are three ba­sic treat­ment op­tions for glau­co­ma and they aim to low­er the pres­sure in your eye and pre­vent dam­age to your op­tic nerve.

Eye Drops— Pre­scrip­tion eye drops are the most com­mon treat­ment op­tion.

Laser Treat­ment—This is a sim­ple pro­ce­dure that your doc­tor can do in the of­fice to help low­er your eye pres­sure. It’s low risk and can help aug­ment even re­place drop treat­ment.

Surgery- Surgery is usu­al­ly rec­om­mend­ed by your doc­tor if eye drops and laser treat­ment are in­ef­fec­tive.

Once di­ag­nosed with glau­co­ma, it is im­per­a­tive that you start treat­ment im­me­di­ate­ly. Your doc­tor will usu­al­ly try eye drops or rec­om­mend laser to start. The most crit­i­cal fac­tor with fight­ing glau­co­ma is to en­sure that you con­tin­ue to use the eye drops as pre­scribed by your doc­tor.

While for­get­ting to put drops can oc­ca­sion­al­ly oc­cur, con­sis­tent and repet­i­tive fail­ure to com­ply with the treat­ment as pre­scribed can re­sult in poor glau­co­ma con­trol and even­tu­al­ly vi­sion loss.

Glau­co­ma treat­ment is con­tin­u­ous and very ef­fec­tive once main­tained. There is no cure for glau­co­ma, but ear­ly and per­sis­tent in­ter­ven­tion can help re­duce fur­ther dam­age.

Dr Ron­nie Bho­la

Trinidad Eye Hos­pi­tal


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