Whether you or someone you know has been diagnosed with glaucoma, or you are just wondering whether
you have glaucoma and want to learn more about the disease, this is the video for you.
For those who are new to the channel, I’m Dr Audrey Tai, board-certified and fellowship
trained Cataract and refractive surgeon, ophthalmologist and cornea specialist, welcome to my channel
- eye Channel by eye surgeon.
I am here to bring you the latest information on eye health and medicine.
In today’s video, I will review what is glaucoma, why it is called the “silent thief
of sight”, what causes glaucoma, and what are the treatments for glaucoma.
Make sure you subscribe to my channel and turn on the notification bell for more videos
on glaucoma and many other topics about eye health.
What is glaucoma?
Have you heard about the term “tunnel vision”? “tunnel vision” fairly accurately describes
the vision damage from severe glaucoma.
Glaucoma can slowly take away the peripheral vision or side vision if it is not diagnosed
or treated.
Peripheral vision allows us to see objects to the side without having to move our eyes
or head.
If you have ever noticed something out of the corner of your eye, it is likely that
you were using your peripheral vision to do so.
People who have severe vision damage from glaucoma, however, may only be able to see
objects that are right in front of them, but nothing to the side, like looking through
a tunnel.
What causes glaucoma?
Glaucoma is caused by fluid building up in the eyes, and raising the pressure inside
of the eye.
The increased eye pressure damages the optic nerve, the nerve which sends vision signals
from your eyes to your brain.
Our eyes constantly make fluid, which is called ‘aqueous humor.’
As new aqueous flows into your eye, the same amount should drain out.
The fluid drains out through an area called the drainage angle.
This process keeps pressure in the eye called intraocular pressure or IOP stable.
But if the drainage angle is not working properly, fluid builds up and raises eye pressure.
Uncontrolled eye pressure causes direct damage to the optic nerve.
The optic nerve is made of more than a million tiny nerve fibers.
It is like an electric cable made up of many small wires.
As these nerve fibers die from increased eye pressure, you will develop blind spots in
your vision.
You may not notice these blind spots until most of your optic nerve fibers have died.
When all of the fibers die, vision will be completely gone.
What are the symptoms of glaucoma?
How do you know if you have glaucoma?
Unfortunately, most of the time, you do not know if you have glaucoma without seeing an
eye doctor.
The most common type of glaucoma is open-angle glaucoma.
There are no warning signs or obvious symptoms in the early stages of open angle glaucoma.
As the disease progresses, blind spots slowly develop in your peripheral or side vision.
Most people with open-angle glaucoma do not notice any change in their vision until the
damage is quite severe.
This is why glaucoma is called the “silent thief of sight.”
The second type of glaucoma is less common but more likely to be symptomatic, and is
called angle-closure glaucoma.
This type happens when someone’s iris, the eye muscle that determines our eye color,
is very close to the drainage angle in their eyes.
The iris can end up blocking the drainage angle.
You can think of it like a piece of paper sliding over a sink drain.
When the drainage angle gets completely blocked, eye pressure rises very quickly.
This is called an acute attack.
It is a true eye emergency, and you should call your ophthalmologist right away or you
might lose your vision permanently.
Here are the signs of an acute angle-closure glaucoma attack: your vision is suddenly blurry,
and you may have severe eye pain, or a severe headache in the forehead, you may also feel
very nauseous and sick to your stomach and even throw up, or you may see rainbow-colored
rings or halos around lights all of the sudden.
When you experience any of those symptoms along with blurry vision, you should call
your ophthalmologist or go to the Emergency room right away as you may be having an acute
angle closure attack.
Many people with angle-closure glaucoma may develop it slowly.
This is called chronic angle-closure glaucoma.
There are no symptoms at first, so they don’t know they have it until the damage is severe
or they have an acute attack.
Therefore, it is very important to have regular eye exams with a qualified eye doctor to detect
early signs of glaucoma and prevent any further vision damage from glaucoma.
How is glaucoma treated?
Glaucoma damage is permanent and cannot be reversed.
Although we cannot cure glaucoma, your ophthalmologist can halt the disease progress with eye drops,
laser glaucoma eye surgery and glaucoma surgeries done in the operating room.
The goal of the all these treatments are to lower eye pressure by either promoting fluid
drainage out of the eye or suppress fluid production inside of the eye.
Stay tuned for a more in depth video on glaucoma treatment options, coming out soon.
Make sure you subscribe to my channel, so you won’t miss any of my new videos.
How is glaucoma diagnosed?
Glaucoma is diagnosed by a series of eye exams and testing that are typically done in your
eye doctor’s office.
Examining for Glaucoma typically includes evaluating the drainage angle of the eye using
a special contact lens.
This is called gonioscopy.
A glaucoma evaluation also includes a dilated eye exam to check the health of the optic
nerve.
The other tests for glaucoma are optic nerve OCT testing and visual field testing.
The OCT test actually directly measures the severity of loss of the optic nerve fibers,
and the visual field test maps out the actual peripheral vision, and the area of loss of
peripheral vision are typically shown as black or gray spots on the visual field test.
What can YOU do to prevent vision loss from glaucoma?
Check out this video to learn more about glaucoma prevention.
Let me know in the comments below if you or anyone you know has been diagnosed with glaucoma,
and what was your experience like?
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Thank you again for watching and I will see you in my next video.