What Is Open Angle Glaucoma?
Friday, March 13th, 2009If you are serious about the health of your eyes, then you should make sure that you see your optical doctor on a regular basis. Making sure that you have regular optical exam, for example your yearly exam for glaucoma, will go a long way towards insuring that you keep your vision. Open angle glaucoma affects more than 80 percent of the people that contract glaucoma. Glaucoma is an eye disease that can be cured if found in the early stages.
There are other types of glaucoma but open angle is the one that affects the eyesight of most people. The sad fact is that there are more than 3 million Americans who have glaucoma but are not aware of it yet, based on statistical research. Glaucoma works by damaging the optic nerve through pressure in the eye or decreasing the blood supply to the optic nerve. If it is caught early enough by scheduling eye exams, then glaucoma can be arrested, and a person’s vision can be saved. However, any damage that glaucoma has caused up to that point is not fixable. The people who are most at risk of contracting glaucoma are black people, people over 40, or anyone that has a history of glaucoma in their family.
Open angle glaucoma is one of the most common forms of glaucoma and also one of the most treatable. The problem with glaucoma is that there are generally no symptoms other than a gradual loss of vision. Unfortunately, this loss of vision is many times not obvious to the person who has contracted glaucoma. The reason for this is the other eye will generally pick up the slack for the eye that is being affected by glaucoma. If both eyes happen to have glaucoma, then they’re both working in conjunction with each other and it is harder to be aware that there is any loss of sight. This type of glaucoma starts by affecting the peripheral vision. If left untreated it will eventually cause a person to have something called tunnel vision, which means they will not be able to see anything out of the sides of their eyes.
Open angle glaucoma is the most common form of glaucoma. Glaucoma is at once the most treatable disease of the eyes, as well as the one that causes the most cases of blindness. This is a sad fact that does not have to continue. If people make sure that they have regular eye exams, then glaucoma would not be able to do all of the damage that it does.
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