Glaucoma – Causes, Symptoms and Medications

What is glaucoma? What causes glaucoma? What are the symptoms? What are the treatments for glaucoma? These are the question we often get to hear from many people who have no idea about what exactly glaucoma is. This article will help you understand the concept of glaucoma and can be useful to you in case you are suffering from glaucoma.

What is Glaucoma?
Glaucoma is one of the major diseases which cause in optic nerves which are the main vision nerves in humans. Optic nerves are responsible for vision since they receive the nerve impulses from retina and send them to the brain in form of electrical signals which in turn comes out as human vision. In glaucoma there is a gradual and progressive damage to optic nerves which initially affects the side vision (peripheral vision). If you don’t tale right treatment on the right time then it may lead to permanent vision loss.

Causes for Glaucoma
In most of the glaucoma case, the main reason was elevated eye pressure which slowly damaged the optic nerves and triggered glaucoma. Optic nerves are the nerves which are responsible for whatever we perceive in the world and are the most sensitive nerve in the human body and cannot take much pressure. Elevated pressures in the eyes contract these nerves and cause glaucoma which can be of various types and severity. The two most common types of glaucoma are open-angle glaucoma and chronic angle-closure glaucoma which are widely diagnosed all over the world.

Symptoms

• People suffering from open-angle glaucoma and chronic angle-closure glaucoma initially will not be able to see any symptoms unless it leads till the course of disease for a longer time. Initially they will suffer from side vision loss, which many people think is the basic symptoms but its fully true. Patients with changing level of intraocular pressure in the eyes face symptoms like seeing haloes around light object especially during early mornings when they get up from sleep.

• Acute-angle closure is another type of glaucoma in which the patient suffers from intense eye pain, nausea, vomiting and headaches, and finally blurred vision. In rare case the nausea and vomiting increase and occur at regular intervals which may or may not be an ocular cause.

• Patients with glaucoma tend to have red eyes and the pupil in this condition sometimes doesn’t contract or is non reactive to external light.

How to Diagnose Glaucoma?
There are many procedures in order to determine glaucoma in the eyes. Six of the most common medical procedures used in diagnosing glaucoma are:

1. Tonometry
2. Pachymetry
3. Gonioscopy
4. Ophthalmoscopy
5. Visual field Testing
6. Optic Nerve Tomography

The above mentioned medical methods to determine glaucoma could be quite costly but is nothing compared to the loss of vision which you might face if the severity of glaucoma increases.

Treatments and Medications
Having a general approach in finding out the glaucoma treatment can sometimes be too late and immediate action has to be taken in order to reduce the problem. Studies have shown that the nerve damage done cannot be fully reversed but the effects can be reduced by taking adequate measures and medications. There are various eye care drops available in the medical field for treating or reducing glaucoma effects and are available in most of medical or pharmaceutical stores. There are many laser surgeries which not many people can afford to high cost and should start looking for potent eye drops which help you combat this problem.