Glaucoma Facts

Glaucoma is a leading cause of blindness in the world, there are 3 million Americans affected and every year 100,000 go blind from glaucoma.  It can be prevented but once developed the vision loss is not correctable. 

 Causes :        While there are many types of glaucoma (Open angle, Narrow angle, Pigmentary, Secondary, Traumatic, congenital and more) they all result in death to the eye nerve (optic nerve). Nerve damage occurs from elevated eye pressure because of too much fluid (overproduction or decreased exit of fluid) inside the eye or from sub-optimal blood circulation to the nerve.  Nerve damage from glaucoma causes small holes in the vision which can spread to large areas of vision loss.  Of the two major kinds, narrow angle glaucoma can cause pain and rapid loss of vision, while open angle glaucoma has no obvious symptoms and steadily destroys the optic nerve. That is why after the portant concept that will vary for each individual glaucoma patient.  A large population study has revealed that in general if one has a diagnosis of glaucoma with some visual field loss ( which is nerve damage) the visual loss did not progress if the intraocular pressure (IOP) was always 16mmHg or below.  That makes this number 16 the universal target to achieve to protect one from further optic nerve cell death.  But the plot thickens because corneal thickness is must be taken into account.  A thinner cornea will give a lower pressure than actual and a thicker cornea will give a higher eye pressure reading than actual.  Your doctor will be considering these issues in setting your target pressure.  Also, depending on the stage of seriousness of the nerve damage lower targets may be necessary.  It is good for glaucoma patients to be involved in their IOP target and success at achieving it.