- January 22, 2025
What is glaucoma?
Glaucoma is a disease that leads to progressive damage to the optic nerve. It can occur in many forms, but most often it is the brightness of an open angle. It must be said that this is a disease that is quite insidious, because very often it will be unnoticeable, there are no symptoms. When these symptoms appear, it is often very late. As far as glaucoma is concerned, the problem will be the increased pressure in the eye, which is related to the fact that excessive fluid accumulates there. However, the pressure level alone does not currently determine the recognition of glaucoma.
So what determines the diagnosis of the disease?
Glaucoma can be recognized if a very thorough examination of the optic nerve is carried out using modern techniques and computer evaluation. In addition, the field of vision also needs to be examined specifically. We now have some indications of specific stages of the disease and these indications can also be followed. It starts with asymptomatic glaucoma, which often does not require treatment. Then we have the glaucoma, which is already symptomatic, but is not a problem for normal life. Full impairment of life functions is the last stage and then it is necessary to take such actions, which must be aimed at the fact that these emerging visual disturbances will not be so much troublesome. That is why the key will be to recognize what stage of the problem may concern a given person. It should be noted that we have glaucoma that act quite slowly, but also when the glaucoma develops very quickly in a young person and therefore the person will be able to see very quickly that the glaucoma has a strong impact on his/her health and causes visual impairment.
Is it true that there are many new anti-glaucoma drugs and huge progress in its treatment?
Indeed, when it comes to treating glaucoma, medicine has gone very far ahead and gives us many opportunities for both pharmacological and surgical treatment. However, no matter which method is chosen, the most important action must be aimed at lowering the pressure in the eyeball. It is necessary to determine what is the target pressure, which will stop glaucoma changes and then action can be taken to guarantee this. In most cases, taking this medicine for about two weeks will be able to determine whether the therapy is sufficient and effective. If there will be no improvement, it will certainly be worth trying other drugs. If it does not change for longer than it does, it may be a sign that you need to think about a laser or surgical procedure. In many cases it is a big mistake to treat yourself with drops for many years and to look at how your eyesight breaks down all the time and slowly loses sight.
Do such cases happen frequently?
Until now, there are often people who appear in medical offices and turn out to be using only drops for a long time. In most cases, such a patient should be referred to a surgical procedure in order to protect him/her from total loss of vision. However, if someone has been using drops for many years, unfortunately there is another aspect that is related to the fact that we have a much greater risk that such an operation will not bring the desired results. That's why we need to think carefully about whether treatment with long years of drops alone is a good solution for us. It should also be remembered that there are situations in which only surgical treatment will be an effective solution immediately after the diagnosis of glaucoma and drops then do not make sense at all.
