Most people know that regular eye examinations are important but are not sure why that is so. Certainly a broken pair of eyeglasses or blurred vision will hasten the trip to the eye doctor And people with diabetes and other medical problems know that their diseases can affect their eyes. But why is an eye exam necessary if you’re seeing well?
Confusion about glasses and eye health is common. However, glasses don’t affect the health of the eye. Your ophthalmologist recommends regular eye examinations because he or she knows that there are problems that can affect your eyes without you knowing it, sometimes with serious consequences. One of those problems is glaucoma.
Glaucoma is one of the leading causes of blindness in the world. Approximately one in every fifty people in this country have the disease. And patients older than 70 have a one in twenty-five chance of having glaucoma. The most alarming statistic, however, is that almost half of those people with glaucoma don’t know they have it.
Some people confuse cataract, a clouding of the lens in the middle of the eye, with glaucoma. Cataracts can be treated at any time without adverse consequences. But glaucoma, if undetected, causes irreversible vision loss by damaging the visual nerve of the eye.
Nerves that provide sensation allow us to experience the world around us. We can taste, smell, hear, and feel the difference between hot and cold because of these "sensory" nerves. Likewise, each eye has its own sensory nerve, called the Optic nerve, that provides sight.
In glaucoma, excessive pressure inside the eye can damage the Optic nerve. This is usually caused by a problem with the drain of the eye, called the trabecular meshwork, so that the fluid that fills the eyeball does not flow out properly. In some people, the Optic nerve is sensitive to the elevated pressures and starts to die.
Most types of glaucoma do not cause any pain or redness of the eye. If you have glaucoma, you would never know that this was happening until it was too late. Only when the disease is very far progressed does it affect your central, or reading vision. Glaucoma causes loss of the side or peripheral vision first. Therefore, most people with glaucoma have very little difficulty reading the eye chart.
Your ophthalmologist will diagnose glaucoma by recognizing increased pressure and Optic nerve damage inside your eye. The pressure is measured with one of several instruments that touch the eye after it is anesthetized with eyedrops. If a non-physician, such as a doctor of optometry examines you, your pressure is measured using a puff of air. When there is a suspicion that you have glaucoma, your doctor may arrange for you to have a computerized peripheral vision test.
Once glaucoma is diagnosed, only an ophthalmologist, a physician specializing in eye care, is qualified to treat you. Eyedrops, laser therapy, and surgery are all methods used to lower the eye pressure for the longest time possible. Which of the three methods does the best is still debated among glaucoma specialists.
There are many misconceptions about eye care. In truth, eyeglasses do not improve the health of the eye, and reading in dim light will not damage the eyes. But don’t be in the dark about glaucoma!
