What is Glaucoma?

Glaucoma, “ a silent thief of sight” , is a group of eye diseases that can cause vision loss and blindness by damaging a nerve in the back of your eye called the optic nerve. The optic nerve is like an electric cable made of many million small fibres. As these nerver fibres start to diminish and burn out, blind spots in vision start to develop. The symptoms can start so slowly that you may not notice them. It causes gradual progressive loss of vision. Our eye is constantly produce a fluid called aqueous humor. In a normal functioning of the eyes, as new fluid enters into the eye field, there is a draining system to automatically make exit the old humor. However, in conditions like Glaucoma, this fluid gets built up in the eye creating a pressure and damaging the nerve fibres in the optic nerve.

The visual field test produces a computer printout of the light thresholds that the patient’s eyes were able to perceive and process .The darkest areas of the test indicate a complete loss of vision in that area. The lighter the area, the more vision the patient has in that part of the eye. Visual field testing can help the eye care provider help detect early signs glaucoma. Some symptoms of a glaucoma attack include severe headache, nausea, eye pain with sudden episodes of blurred eyesight. You tend to vomit more often and start to see halo’s or rings under bright light.

Glaucoma Evaluation

We perform a detailed History taking and assess the vision. We measure the Intra ocular pressure with gold standard Applanationtonometer. Add pic-AT)We then perform the following evaluations:

  • Anterior segment evaluation with Slit Lamp Microscope
  • Ocular angle evacuation with Gonioscope – This allows us the doctor to get a clear look at the drainage angle to determine the type of glaucoma.
  • Optic nerve head evaluation –90D – The doctor then inspects the optic nerve for signs of damage.
  • Field test – The visual field test will check for blank spots in the patient’s vision and will help the doctor to identify blank spots in the field of vision.