You have heard the word glaucoma. But do you actually know what it means? Glaucoma is a nerve disease that slowly destroys your optic nerve, often without any symptoms until the damage is severe. Here is what you need to know.
Glaucoma is not the same as cataracts. Patients confuse these two conditions every day. Cataracts cloud the lens of your eye. Glaucoma damages the optic nerve.
Think of glaucoma as your eye choking from the inside out. Pressure builds inside the eye and begins killing the retinal nerve fibers. Those fibers do not regenerate. Once they are gone, they are gone.
The goal with glaucoma is not to improve your vision. It is to preserve the vision you still have.
This is the most important thing to understand: glaucoma has no symptoms in its early stages.
By the time most patients notice something is wrong, significant nerve damage has already occurred. In advanced stages, glaucoma begins stealing your peripheral vision first. Your brain compensates by using the other eye. You can lose more than half your nerve fibers and still test at 20/20.
That is exactly why glaucoma is called the “silent thief of sight.”
High eye pressure is the most common cause, but it is not the only one. There is a type called normal tension glaucoma, where pressure is within the normal range of 10 to 21, and the nerve is still dying.
Here is what happens over time:
Glaucoma is a slow-acting disease. It can take years for signs to appear in testing, and years longer before you notice any change in your vision.
Anyone can develop glaucoma. Your eye doctor screens for it at every routine exam. That said, certain factors raise your risk:
People who wear glasses or contacts tend to be diagnosed earlier, not because their prescription raises their risk, but because they are in the eye doctor’s office more often.
There is no single glaucoma test. The air puff test checks pressure, but pressure is only one piece of the picture.
A complete glaucoma evaluation looks at:
Yes, dilation matters. Looking at the optic nerve through the back of the eye is how doctors catch glaucoma early. There is no workaround for that.
Your doctor will also ask about your medications, family history, and sleep habits. These questions are not filler. They are clinically relevant to what is happening with your vision.
Once nerve fibers are lost, they cannot be restored. Treatment focuses entirely on stopping further damage.
Depending on the type and severity, your doctor may recommend:
If you are prescribed drops and do not feel any different, that is expected. Glaucoma does not cause pain. The drops are protecting vision you still have. Take them.
You cannot treat glaucoma with lifestyle changes alone. But you can support your treatment and protect your optic nerve by:
Glaucoma is a nerve disease that destroys vision silently, often before any symptoms appear. Early detection is the only way to protect your sight, because damage cannot be reversed. A routine eye exam is your best defense.
If you have not had a dilated eye exam recently, or if glaucoma runs in your family, do not wait.
Schedule an appointment at Alliance Vision Institute
Learn more about our eye care services at Alliance Vision Institute and the rest of the Days of Our Eyes series.
This blog is part of the Days of Our Eyes series, featuring Dr. Kenneth King and Dr. Christopher Cha at Alliance Vision Institute in Fort Worth, TX.