Glaucoma affects a large part of the world population, and anyone including you and me can be its next victim.
It's the leading cause of blindness all the world over.
It normally doesn't give you any warning signal. And by the time you come to notice a significant loss in your peripheral vision, it has already done a permanent damage to a considerable extent.
An increase in the intra-ocular pressure (IOP) to such levels as start damaging the optic nerve, is responsible for going on decreasing the peripheral vision to the point of total blindness in the end.
Types of glaucoma:
Chronic or primary open-angle type:- No warning signal - the silent thief! More dangerous than the noisy dacoit since you come to know of it only after you have already suffered a major loss.
Acute or closed-angle type:- The noisy dacoit - produces sudden attacks including eye pain, headaches, dilated pupils, vision loss, nausea and vomiting along with red eyes and haloes around lights.
Glaucoma Closure Angle
Glaucoma is caused by an increased pressure of aqueous humor in the eye due to increased production or reduced drainage through the drainage angles.
Acute or closed-angle glaucoma is a medical emergency. If it is not dealt with immediately and the drainage angles are not opened at once, optic nerve may damage with considerable vision loss within hours.
There is no better treatment than its prevention by getting the IOP checked regularly; but once you have fallen victim to it, the only treatment option left is decreasing the production of aqueous humor, increasing its drainage, or both.
Eye drops make the first line of treatment; like beta-blocker, alpha-2 agonists and prostaglandin analogs.
Trabeculectomy
The second line of treatment is trabeculectomy - creating an artificial drainage area; or trabeculoplasty - a surgery to increase aqueous humor drainage by creating tiny holes where the cornea and iris meet.
The third line of treatment is a drainage device implant in the eye in order to improve the fluid drainage.
Unluckily the vision that has already been lost is lost for good. At least that is what the stand of ophthalmology is.
Bilateral Congenital Glaucoma
But in the words of the famous American ophthalmologist Dr. W.H.Bates:
'Not only do all errors of refraction and all functional disturbances of the eye disappear when it sees by central fixation, but many organic conditions are relieved or cured. I am unable to set any limits to its possibilities. I would not have ventured to predict that glaucoma, incipient cataract and syphilitic iritis could be cured by central fixation; but It is a fact that these conditions have disappeared when central fixation was attained. Relief was often obtained in a few minutes, and, in rare cases, this relief was permanent.'
'Usually, however, a permanent cure required more prolonged treatment. Inflammatory conditions of all kinds, including inflammation of the cornea, iris, conjunctiva, the various coats of the eyeball and even the optic nerve itself, have been benefited by central fixation after other methods had failed.'
Vision therapy is currently working on these lines only, in order to restore the vision already lost due to it, or preventing it through third eye opening - which is another name for central fixation of the eye but achieved in a biologically more objective and hence, a very quick way.
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