What is glaucoma and how can it be treated?
Glaucoma is a disease which can lead to damage of the optic nerve of the eye which can result in blindness. Open-angle glaucoma, the most common type of glaucoma, affects about 3 million Americans. At first there are no symptoms, but over the years it can steal your sight. With early treatment, you can often protect your eyes against serious vision loss and blindness. Although glaucoma can never be cured, you can be treated in order to control the disease. This makes early diagnosis and treatment important to protect your sight. Eye drops are the first line of treatment in most cases, with the objective to lower the intraocular pressure to a safe level. This may require one or several different drops to achieve adequate lowering of the pressure within the eye. If medical therapy fails, laser surgery can then be tried to lower the eye pressure. Conventional surgery, which creates a new opening for fluid to leave the eye, can be performed as a last resort. Remember that the treatment for
