The Silent Thief

Don’t let Glaucoma steal your vision. Some people wait until they’ve lost their side vision before they consult an eye doctor. Did you know it’s estimated 3 million people don’t know they have glaucoma?

In glaucoma, the normal flow and drainage of fluid within the eye is disrupted. Pressure builds up from this blockage and presses on tiny vessels of the optic nerve that transmits visual signals to the brain. Left untreated, the optic nerve becomes damaged and results in partial or total vision loss. It’s known as the thief of sight because its destructive impact happens slowly and without early symptoms. Instead of seeing things out of the corner of your eye, your vision becomes tunnel like. Over time, your central vision fades into blindness.

Anyone can have glaucoma, but the risks go up if you have a family history of glaucoma, high blood pressure, high fluid pressure in your eyes, have diabetes, are older than 60, and take steroid drugs. Emergency systems are severe eye pain, head or brow aches, eye redness, seeing haloes or colored rings around light, and blurred vision. There are a few different types of glaucoma also.

  • open-angle or chronic glaucoma: Fluid pressure is normal, but the optic nerve is damaged.
  • closed-angle or acute glaucoma: Blocked drainage canals in the eye lead to a rapid rise in fluid pressure
  • congenital: before birth, drainage canals didn’t form properly
  • secondary: Diabetes, high blood pressure, cataracts, eye tumors, eye surgeries, and steroid medications lead glaucoma in some people.

Treatments: Medicines, especially eye drops to relieve pressure. Laser surgery creates small holes in blocked drainage canals to allow fluid to drain. Cataract surgery and micro-bypass

person s eye
Photo by Gëzim Fazliu on

stents reduce eye pressure.

Leave a Reply


You are commenting using your account. Log Out /  Change )

Google photo


Twitter picture


Facebook photo


Connecting to %s