Millions of Americans struggle with some vision impairment, including 3 million with glaucoma.
Glaucoma can cause blindness if left untreated. In fact it’s a leading cause of blindness for people over age 60, so getting treatment as early as possible helps preserve your vision.
To help you better understand this illness and its effect on your eyes, let’s examine how this disease works, what leads to it, and what symptoms indicate a need to get medical help.
If you live in the Frederick, Maryland area, and want to protect your eyes from glaucoma, look to our team at the Maryland Vision Center.
Your eyes are complex, delicate organs that function through precise operation. Glaucoma is a broad term for diseases that disrupt that balance through excessive pressure. That excess, called intraocular pressure, damages your optic nerve over time.
Aqueous humor, a fluid in your eyes, provides nourishment and travels through your pupils to the front of your eyes, and under normal circumstances, drains through your trabecular meshwork.
These are mesh-like canals where the cornea and iris converge at an angle, and glaucoma increases the pressure there through resistance, causing a buildup and gradually affecting your optic nerve.
The overall cause of the increased pressure in glaucoma isn’t completely understood, but there are different forms of the illness, with open-angle glaucoma being the most common.
Risk factors for this eye disease include a family history, thin corneas, eye injury, certain eye surgeries, extreme myopia (nearsightedness) or hyperopia (farsightedness), and the use of corticosteroid eye drops.
People over age 55, as well as Hispanic, Black, and Asian populations are at higher risk of glaucoma. Diseases like diabetes, migraine, sickle cell anemia, and hypertension also increase your chances of developing glaucoma.
This eye disease has a rather ominous nickname, the “silent thief of sight,” because almost half of the people with glaucoma don’t experience signs in the early stages. Once signs start to appear, blind spots become common, often affecting your peripheral vision.
Angle-closure glaucoma is a type that presents with severe eye pain, sudden blurriness, nausea, headache, vomiting, and seeing rainbow-colored halos or rings around lights.
If you’re over 40 and you have any of the risk factors listed above, see us for an eye exam to test for glaucoma, even if you don’t have symptoms. Glaucoma can be complicated to detect in its early stages, so be aware of the signs and schedule an appointment with our team at the Maryland Vision Center.
