Glaucoma: How annual eye checkup helps

Glaucoma is an eye disease characterized by damage to the optic nerve if left undetected or untreated. It also causes irreversible damage to the eyes.  The resident Optometrist, Touchstone Eye International, Abuja, Dr Enyinnaya Ogidi said it is important for every individual to go for eye check-up at least once in a year.  “Early detection […]

Glaucoma is an eye disease characterized by damage to the optic nerve if left undetected or untreated. It also causes irreversible damage to the eyes.

 The resident Optometrist, Touchstone Eye International, Abuja, Dr Enyinnaya Ogidi said it is important for every individual to go for eye check-up at least once in a year. 

“Early detection is the solution and can help in managing the situation properly to prevent subsequent damage that could lead to blindness,” he said.

The two major types of glaucoma are the primary open-angle glaucoma and angle-closure glaucoma. The signs and symptoms depend on the type.

According to Dr Ogidi , occasional blurring of vision often occur when one wakes up from sleep or with increased daily activities resulting in increase in blood pressure that affects the eye pressure. 

He added that some of the symptoms may also come as a result of injury sustained from accident which could be domestic, car accident and also industrial.

He said the main cause of glaucoma is elevated intramuscular pressure which increases in age and usually occurs among aged persons especially Africans.

 The risk factors include diabetes, family history of glaucoma,eye injury due to accident.

“Nothing should be taken for granted when it comes to the eye. When something drops in the eye, slapping someone in the eye, these things call for glaucoma,” said Dr Ogidi.

According to him, reflective errors is also a risk factor, where people who are supposed to use glasses leave that reflective error uncorrected for a very long period of time.

  The two major ways of treatment are medication and surgery. 

Dr Ogidi said there are some anti-ocular hypertensive drugs that are meant for glaucoma patients in order to maintain the range of the eye pressure while the surgery involves either the normal procedure or the laser surgery. 

“But note, that the laser surgery is good but it has a longer effect on the westerners while the normal procedure has long lasting effect for the black race,” he said.

He advised against self medication saying the eye is the last place to practice that.

A team of researchers, led by David Calkins, Ph.D., vice chair and director of Research at the Vanderbilt Eye Institute, recently revealed their breakthrough discovery in glaucoma, showing new hopes for treatments to preserve vision. 

The findings released in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) will have treatment ramifications to combat age-related neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.

The paper, “Axogenic Mechanism Enhances Retinal Ganglion Cell Excitability During Early Progression in Glaucoma,” unmasked a revolutionary conclusion in the past it was believed that as retinal activity is lost, the connection between the retina and the brain should be gone, but the opposite is true.

 “What we have demonstrated in our most recent study is that the brain fights back and we identified the mechanism for what causes this compensatory response. We found that for a brief period of time this particular mechanism actually preserves vision, despite the onslaught of stress in glaucoma,” said Calkins.