World Glaucoma Week: What you need to know about Glaucoma the Silent Thief of Sight

Hello guys,

How is everyone doing? It is the start of a new week and i want to use this opportunity to wish each and everyone of us a happy new week and Happy Independence Day. May our weeks be fruitful and our goals and aspirations be achieved.

Today i would like us to take a look at one of the leading causes of blindness in the world especially in the African setting and what we need to do to protect ourselves or save our sight. I do hope you enjoy the read and that you gain something out of it.

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Glaucoma, The Silent Thief of Sight

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Glaucoma is an ocular condition of the eye which comes along with the death of apoptosis of the optic nerve cells either by means of rise in intraocular pressure or idiopathic apoptosis of cells (normal tension glaucoma.) Glaucoma is more or less a syndrome in terms of diagnosis and treating owing to the fact that the parameters that come together for one to be diagnosed are numerous and a lot has to check out.

The condition is known as as the silent thief of sight because it doesn't give out any symptoms to the patient or the individual affected until vision is almost gone. This is however with the exception of acute closure angle glaucoma though as that tends to give a very sharp immediate rise in eye pressure that present with severe pain and headaches, seeing haloes around light and nausea. Some individuals even collapse.

But that is not our main focus for the day, our focus is on open angle closure glaucoma which doesn't give any symptom whatsoever until vision is lost. So the big question has always been how then do we as scientist and as health professionals tackle this condition and save people's sight before it is too late.

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What can be done?

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The good news when it comes to glaucoma is the fact that early detection saves lives as early detection warrants early treatment which slows the progression of the disease or cell death allowing one to have the full quality of vision for their entire lifespan.

What this means is that we need to take our regular visits to the optometrist seriously. A lot of individuals get lucky through what we term as an opportunistic diagnosis where they come to the clinic for a general checkup and the optometrist chance upon the fact that their eyes of fundus may have glaucomatous signs.

Glaucoma diagnosis is purely objective and requires your optometrist or ophthalmologist to be able to tell through a series of tests including, funduscopy, visual field test, ocular coherence tomography test, and some of the more basic tests like visual acuity.

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Treatment/Management

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Glaucoma as at now has not cure and scientist and doing their very best in finding more better treatment options and even understanding more of its pathogenesis to be able to halt it from the scratch but until then there is not cure. It is treatable though and just as i said if caught early and patient should be religious with the treatment good quality vision can be enjoyed through out the lifespan.

Treatment include the use of beta blockers, carbohic anhydrase eye drops and the likes to reduce the intraocular pressure by reducing the aqueuous flow or increasing the aqueuous drainage from the eye through the trabecular meshwork. Treatment options also include surgery to enhance the drainage flow this is especially recommend for the young patients to enable them protect their nerve integrity better.

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Conclusion

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Glaucoma diagnosis is not a death sentence or blind sentence and as such it is pertinent that individuals who may be diagnosed as such take their condition seriously and the management protocol serious to be able to salvage their vision whichever may be left. Glaucoma is treatable, early diagnosis is key, get a test today.

_{All images are owned by @nattybongo}

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Rerefences

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_{Bol P. (2003). Glaucoom [Glaucoma]. Nederlands tijdschrift voor tandheelkunde, 110(7), 298–299.}

_{Kang, J. M., & Tanna, A. P. (2021). Glaucoma. The Medical clinics of North America, 105(3), 493–510. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mcna.2021.01.004}

_{Weinreb, R. N., Aung, T., & Medeiros, F. A. (2014). The pathophysiology and treatment of glaucoma: a review. JAMA, 311(18), 1901–1911. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2014.3192}