Glaucoma

Glaucoma is a number of diseases that harm the eye’s optic nerve and can result in blindness. With early recognition, you can prevent your eyes against serious vision loss.

Most individuals with glaucoma have no early symptoms or pain. See your RI optometrist consistently to diagnose and treat glaucoma in order to minimize vision loss.

Glaucoma is one of the main causes of blindness and vision loss in the United States. It can happen at any age, including young children, yet is more common in older adults.

Most individuals don’t have any symptoms. The first sign is frequently a loss of peripheral vision, which can go unnoticed until late in the disease. Glaucoma requires quick detection.

Occasionally, pressure inside the eye can rise to severe levels. In these cases, you may have sudden eye pain, headache, blurred vision, or the presence of halos around lights.

It is estimated that three million Americans have glaucoma, however just a portion of them realize that they have glaucoma. Glaucoma is a main cause of blindness for individuals over 60 years old. Be that as it may, blindness from glaucoma can regularly be alleviated with early treatment. At the point when glaucoma develops, usually you don’t have any early symptoms and the disease progresses slowly. In this way, glaucoma can steal your sight step by step. Luckily, early discovery and treatment (with glaucoma eyedrops, glaucoma surgery or both) can preserve your vision.

The optic nerve is associated with the retina — a layer of light-sensitive tissue coating the inside of the eye — and is comprised of many nerve fibers, similar to an electric link is comprised of many wires. The optic nerve sends signals from your retina to your brain, where these signals are translated as the images you see.

In the solid eye, a liquid called aqueous humor circulates inside the front part of your eye. To keep up a constant sound eye pressure, your eye constantly produces a small measure of aqueous humor while an equivalent measure of this liquid flows out of your eye. In the event that you have glaucoma, the aqueous humor does not stream out of the eye appropriately. Liquid pressure in the eye builds up and, after some time, causes harm to the optic nerve fibers.

Less common causes occur from a blunt or chemical injury to your eye, severe eye infection, blocked blood vessels inside the eye, and other conditions. It’s uncommon, yet sometimes eye surgery to amend another condition can bring it on. It usually affects both eyes, however it might be worse in one than the other.

Think about your eye as a sink, in which the faucet is always running and the drain is always open. The aqueous humor is constantly flowing through the front chamber. It is created by an organ called the ciliary body, situated behind the iris. It flows between the iris and the lens and, in the wake of nourishing the cornea and lens, flows out through an exceptionally little spongy tissue. This is called the trabecular meshwork and is just a single fiftieth of an inch wide, which serves as the drain of the eye. The trabecular meshwork is situated in the point where the iris and cornea meet. At the point when this drain becomes clogged, aqueous cannot leave the eye as fast as it is created, causing the liquid to decrease. Since the eye is a closed compartment, your `sink’ doesn’t flood; instead the moved down liquid causes increased pressure to develop inside the eye. We call this open angle glaucoma.

To understand how this increased pressure affects the eye, think about your eye as a balloon. At the point when an excessive amount of air is blown into the balloon, the pressure builds, causing it to pop. In any case, the eye is excessively strong, making it impossible to pop. Instead, it gives at the weakest point, which is the site in the sclera at which the optic nerve leaves the eye.

The optic nerve is a piece of the focal nervous system and carries visual data from the eye to the brain. This cranial nerve is comprised of more than one million nerve axons, which are nerve fiber extensions of the retinal ganglion cells. At the point when the eye pressure is increased and additionally other prompting factors exist, the optic nerve becomes harmed and the retinal ganglion cells experience a slow process of cell passing named “apoptosis.” The demise of the retinal cells and degeneration of the nerve fibers results in changeless vision loss.

Secondary glaucoma is glaucoma that results from another eye condition or disease. For instance, someone who has had an eye injury, someone who is on a prolonged steroid treatment or someone who has a tumor may create secondary glaucoma. The most widely recognized forms of secondary glaucoma are: pseudoexfoliative glaucoma, pigmentary glaucoma, and neovascular glaucoma.