Glaucoma is the leading cause of blindness in people over 40 years of age.
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Imagine your eye as a sophisticated camera. Front side of the eye is covered with transparent cornea and eye iris inside of the eye act as a camera: with constant constriction and expansion it controls the amount of the light that enters the eye. The eye lenses focus the rays on retina and it "records" pictures like a movie camera and that pictures come to our brain along the optical nerve. Front side of the eye is filled with watery fluid that drains away into cardiovascular system system creating eye pressure and forming the eye ball.
Glaucoma occurs when production of the watery fluid is increased or when it can't drain away normally. Then the eye pressure rises and optic nerve suffer of pressure that lead to its damaging and destroying. The transmission of visual messages to brain gradually breaks and the result is damage of the vision and finally blindness.
They are many types of glaucoma. Sometimes it can be the result of some eye disease (inflammation, injure, damaging, diabetes, eye tumour...) and then we speak about secondary glaucoma. The rarest type of glaucoma is innate glaucoma. The most common type is primary glaucoma that may acute or, the most common, chronic type of glaucoma.
Acute type of glaucoma or like doctor's like to call it glaucoma of "tight or closed corner" (watery fluid cannot pass) can manifest itself very violently. We can freely say that disease starts out of the blue sky. On the first sight healthy person suddenly becomes a heavy patient, feeling strong pain in face and one eye, heaving headache, nausea, vomiting and seeing rainbow colours around source of light. If eye pressure doesn't get lower in the next few hours (eye drops, surgery), it may cause serious and permanent damage to the eye.
Chronic glaucoma is the most common type of glaucoma. It develops very slowly without any symptoms or warnings, firstly gradually destroying the peripheral sight. In other words, without controlling the eye pressure you cannot know that you suffer from glaucoma unless your visual field starts to contract. If you don't start treatment, you will start to see like through binocular and that condition will end as blindness.
Fortunately, all that can be prevented. When your ophthalmologist identify high eye pressure, regular controls, eye drops and drugs that your ophthalmologist prescribed, or surgery, ca control glaucoma.
Tell your doctor if you are suffering of some illness. Eye drops enter blood system and if some other illnesses exists then the additional caution is necessary. This is also one of the reasons that should stop you from buying eye drops yourself.
Check your vision on a regular basis especially if you are older than 40 and if you have family history of glaucoma. If you already have glaucoma use your therapy on daily basis and don't forget your regular examinations.
Glaucoma is a disease that cannot be cured but with early detecting and proper treating permanent loss of sight can be prevented and illness can be controlled. ■
Acute type of glaucoma or like doctor's like to call it glaucoma of "tight or closed corner" (watery fluid cannot pass) can manifest itself very violently. We can freely say that disease starts out of the blue sky. On the first sight healthy person suddenly becomes a heavy patient, feeling strong pain in face and one eye, heaving headache, nausea, vomiting and seeing rainbow colours around source of light. If eye pressure doesn't get lower in the next few hours (eye drops, surgery), it may cause serious and permanent damage to the eye.