Glaucoma, popularly known as glaucoma or black water disease, is the loss of visual acuity due to increased intraocular pressure. As a result, the visual field of the person gradually narrows. The person begins to see as if he were looking through binoculars. Glaucoma, an insidious disease that makes itself known in the last stages of the disease, can cause irreparable damage to the visual border when diagnosed late.
Who gets glaucoma?
The risk of developing glaucoma increases in individuals with a family history of glaucoma, over the age of 40, in intraocular inflammatory diseases (uveitis), in those who use long-term cortisone, and in patients with myopia and diabetes.
What are the causes of glaucoma?
Intraocular pressure rises due to the blockage in the outflow tract of the fluid secreted in the eye and providing nutrition to the eye. In this case, the nutrition of the tissues in the eye, especially the border layer, is disrupted. It causes irreversible damage at the end of vision.
What are the symptoms of glaucoma?
It can cause rings around lights, blurred vision from time to time, and sometimes headaches. However, the patient may rarely feel these findings. There are many causes of headache. It may not give any symptoms. In advanced stages of vision loss, the patient may feel. However, vision loss is the last stage of the disease. At this stage, vision loss is irreversible. For these reasons, people should have an eye examination once a year. Measuring eye pressure alone is not sufficient for detecting eye pressure. Eye floor examination should also be done.
In the examination, we perform some tests that show the condition of the retinas of the eyes for patients with high eye pressure. We can understand the narrowing or loss of the visual field due to glaucoma with the visual field test. We can measure border fiber thicknesses with eye tomography that takes sections from the border layer. We can detect tissue loss or destruction in the border of vision.
Glaucoma is seen in 3% of the society. It occurs in two types. 99% open angle type, 1% closed angle. The open-angle type is more dangerous because it has an insidious course. Closed-angle type presents with sudden decrease in vision, severe eye pain and redness.
Sometimes, although the eye pressure is higher than the usual 25-30, if normal findings are obtained in the tests we do, we call this situation ocular hypertension. We do not say that these people have glaucoma. We do not give treatment, but we check more often as it may be a glaucoma candidate in the future.
Sometimes, the opposite situation can be the case of what we call low pressure glaucoma. Although the eye pressure is in the middle of 15-20, if there is loss in the visual field and there are signs of damage to the visual border in the tomography, we start the treatment.
In summary;
Glaucoma is the second preventable cause of blindness in the world. The only way to deal with this insidious disease; It is an eye doctor inspection at least once a year in order to detect glaucoma early before visual field loss occurs.
