Glaucoma

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Glaucoma is a disease that damages your eye's optic nerve. It usually happens when fluid builds up in the front part of your eye. That extra fluid increases the pressure in your eye (intraocular pressure, or IOP), damaging the optic nerve, which will lead to a gradual loss of peripheral vision and ultimately central vision, leading to complete blindness.

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Eyes with high IOP are at a higher risk of developing glaucoma, but even some eyes with normal IOP will develop glaucoma. Not all eyes can withstand the same amount of pressure. It is very important to monitor the eye pressure routinely, so that we can establish a trend. 

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Early detection is absolutely crucial in preventing or slowing down vision loss. Glaucoma is also called silent killer because there are no symptoms in the early stages of the diseases. Only in the advanced stage of the disease will symptoms be noticed, but vision loss will become much more severe. 

 

At Central Eye Care, our comprehensive eye examination includes eye pressure measurement by applanation (gold standard in eye pressure measurement), and dilated pupil examination to look at the optic nerve. Our fundus camera can capture an image of the optic nerve for future comparisons. If we suspect you of having high IOP or the optic nerve looks suspicious, we will recommend a full glaucoma workup to establish a diagnosis. This includes Humphrey visual field testing and optical coherence tomography (OCT) to measure the thickness of the optic nerve.