What is Glaucoma?
Glaucoma is a disease which damages optic nerve. Optic nerve is a cord that attaches the eye to the brain and takes messages to brain. Damage to Optic nerve disrupts the travel of signal from eye to brain, which leads to loss of vision. Loss of vision from glaucoma is irreversible.
Glaucoma usually cause no symptoms in the early stages. Our doctors have variety of tools which help in determining if a person has glaucoma or is at risk of developing glaucoma before symptoms appear.
Following are the Tools our doctor use to determine risk factors for glaucoma;
Visual Field Test
Glaucoma loss occurs in peripheral visual field first.
Visual field is an important measure of the extent of damage to your optic. Visual field lets your doctor know if peripheral vision is being lost.
Ophthalmoscopy
Ophthalmoscope is an instrument used to look directly through the pupil at the optic nerve. Its color and appearance indicates whether or not damage from glaucoma is present and how extensive it is.
Fundus Camera
Advance photography technique is used to capture inside structures of eyes to detect smallest change in optic nerve health.
Imaging Technology
Our doctors use optical coherence tomography images of optic nerve to evaluate the optic nerve and retinal nerve fiber layer. Our Cirrus OCT is the most advance optic nerve scanning tool available for glaucoma progression analysis. OCT highlights the areas of the eye damaged and provide quantitative measurement of anatomical structure of eye.Large databases have been established to compare an individual’s anatomic structures to those of other patients in the same age group. This software and technology show great promise in early detection of glaucoma.
Tonometery
The tonometer measures the pressure in your eye. Higher the eye pressure, higher the risk of glaucoma progression.
Pachymetery
The Pachymeter measures central corneal thickness.
This is an important measure and helps doctor interpret IOP levels. Some people with thin central corneal thickness will have pressures that are actually higher than when measured by tonometry. Those with thick CCT will have a true IOP that is lower than that measured.
Gonioscopy
Gonioscopy is performed to measure the drainage angle of eye. Part of eye called trabecular meshwork is where fluid drains out of the eye. Patients with narrow angle have higher risk of high angle closure and sudden loss of vision with glaucoma.
Regular eye exams can detect eyes at risk for glaucoma. Early detection is the key to prevent permanent vision loss. Our Glaucoma clinics are fully equipped with above tools to help doctors save our patients vision.
