What is Glaucoma: Causes, Symptoms, and Treatment

Your eyesight is one of the essential senses you possess to help you live a productive life. Close to 80% of what you perceive from your environment comes through your eyes. Therefore, if you have a problem with your eyes, it can reduce your productivity or prevent you from enjoying your life.

What is Glaucoma?

Glaucoma is one of the common eye issues that cause many people to seek treatment from our optometrist in Mahogany. It is vital that you visit our Mahogany eye doctor for eye examination since conditions such as glaucoma can cause blindness if they are not treated.

Glaucoma, In a Nutshell

Your eye has the optic nerve that plays a vital role in your vision. It is responsible for sending signals from the retina (the tissue at the back of the eye) to your brain. Your brain needs these signals to create the images. So, glaucoma refers to a group of conditions that damage the optic nerve.

In most cases, the condition arises due to an elevated pressure level inside your eye. Glaucoma in almost all scenarios can result from too much pressure in one or both of your eyes. Nevertheless, glaucoma can also arise even when the pressure levels inside your eyes are normal.

This is why you need glaucoma screening in Calgary so that our optometrist can spot the early warning signs of the condition before complications occur.

Most people will develop the disease later in life, but it can develop at any stage and can affect all races, even though the Black and Hispanic populations are at a greater risk.

What are the Causes of Glaucoma?

As mentioned earlier, abnormally high pressure in the eye is the main cause of glaucoma, known as ocular hypertension. However, you can have glaucoma even if your eye pressure is normal.

Just a snippet of the eye will help shed some light on how glaucoma occurs. The front portion of your eye has a clear liquid known as the aqueous humor that nourishes the cells and tissues inside your eye, and it is vital for maintaining the normal shape of your eye.
The aqueous humor is produced by the structure located behind the iris, known as the ciliary body.

The aqueous humor is constantly produced and drains from the eye through a mesh-like channel located where the cornea and iris meet.
The balance between how much aqueous humor is produced and the amount that drains through the mesh-like channel is what will determine the pressure inside your eye.

Therefore, if something happens and causes the mesh-like channel to close or clog, then the aqueous humor will not drain out of the eye quickly enough and increase the pressure in the eye. This is what causes intraocular pressure.

When this pressure persists, it may damage the optic nerve at the back of the eye. This pressure can build up over the years before nerve damage starts. At times, it can occur relatively quickly.

Early detection and treatment can keep glaucoma at bay. Here are some of the things that can cause high eye pressure and glaucoma:

• Hereditary predisposition to glaucoma
• Eye injury or trauma
• Extreme farsightedness or nearsightedness
• Regular use of certain drugs such as steroids
• Underlying health conditions such as diabetes or hypertension
• Thin corneas
• Being over 60 years

What are the Symptoms of Glaucoma?

You need to peel your eyes for the following symptoms:

• Blurred vision
• Eye pain
• Elevated eye pressure
• Cloudy eyes
• Headaches
• Nausea and vomiting
• Blind spots in your eyes
• Eye redness
• Seeing colored rings around lights

The symptoms will differ in severity based on the type of glaucoma and your condition. This is what makes routine glaucoma screening in Calgary crucial because a test is the best way to ascertain whether you have glaucoma or not.

Sadly, it’s a bit too late if you notice the symptoms. However, vision loss can be prevented or slowed if the glaucoma is detected early. Unfortunately, if vision loss occurs due to glaucoma, it will not be reversed in most cases.

Glaucoma Treatment

In most cases, treatment is geared to reduce eye pressure, to prevent, stop, or slow the progression of glaucoma that can lead to vision loss. So, our Mahogany eye doctor may recommend topical treatments, laser treatments, and surgical procedures.

Contact us at Premier Eye Care in Mahogany to schedule an appointment if you have an eye issue.