Hello everybody, we welcome you to World Glaucoma Week as we will be making a bit of a shift from low vision to be continued in some other time.
For the past decade, World Glaucoma Week has been a combined project between the World Glaucoma Patient Association and the World Glaucoma Association.
We at Viewpoint Specialist Eyecentres are not left out of the week and we have brought to you what you need to know about this eye disease, responsible for most of the blind cases.
We already posted on Glaucoma on our social media handles, but for a good read, we have come up with this for your consumption.
What is Glaucoma?
It is general name for a group of eye conditions that damages the optic nerve at the point it exits the eye.
In basic science, we learned that the optic nerve is responsible for transferring information from the retina to the brain.
The eye needs a significant level of pressure to make the eyeball keep its required shape for its functionality.
Glaucoma sets in when there is increased pressure on the optic nerve or when it becomes weak.
If you are very observant, you will notice that a healthy eye carries a clear liquid that is found in the front part of the eye.
The eye is required to constantly produce this clear liquid which in return helps to keep the eye in a healthy pressure.
In the eye of a glaucoma patient, this liquid, or rather, fluid would not move properly through the eye drainage system.
This results in damage to the optic nerve because there is increased pressure on the eye. If not treated at the early stage, it can lead to a complicated eye disorder
Why increased pressure is serious on the eye
The optic nerve gets injured when it is under too much pressure and the extent of the damage depends on the amount of pressure and its duration.
It can also be determined by the supply of blood to the optic nerve.
With very high pressure, the optic nerve will get damaged but at a lower pressure, it will begin to get damaged at a slow pace.
At this rate, the probability of getting a permanent loss to eyesight is imminent if not attended to.