What To Know About Preventing And Treating Glaucoma
Glaucoma is an eye condition that affects people without them even realizing it until many years later. This is because glaucoma slowly causes vision loss until you are completely blind. Since it happens without you realizing until it's too late, it's important to know what you can do to treat and prevent it from taking over your vision. Here's what you should know:
You Need Regular Eye Exams:
Even if you have seemingly perfect vision, you need to have regular eye exams. These eye exams will tell you whether or not you should be concerned about glaucoma. This is because your optometrist will tell you whether or not you have the correct eye pressure. If not, then there is a high concern that you may have glaucoma. From here, your optometrist will look for other symptoms of glaucoma and treat it accordingly.
Your Risk if High if You Have a Relative With Glaucoma:
If you have a direct relative, such as a brother sister, mom, or dad with glaucoma, then your risk of developing glaucoma increases tremendously. For this reason, it's important to visit your optometrist more than twice a year as you normally would if you didn't have a risk.
Take Symptoms Seriously:
Some of the symptoms of glaucoma could be the result of some other eye condition that is not as dangerous. However, this doesn't mean that you shouldn't take it seriously. For example, if you have eye pain, sometimes blurry vision, or redness, then you need to visit your optometrist to figure out what's causing it even if you have recently already had an eye exam. If these symptoms are ignored, then glaucoma has a faster chance of progressing.
The Damages Cannot be Reversed:
The damages that you suffer from glaucoma cannot be reversed, which is why it's important to get treatment for it right away, even before you realize that you have glaucoma. This way, you can avoid partial or total vision loss with treatment done by your optometrist. Your optometrist can prevent further damages with laser surgery, trap door surgery, which allows fluid to drain from the eyes to reduce pressure, or eye drops that help reduce pressure, as well. The drops are common for those who get regular eye exams and catch glaucoma early before surgery is needed.
When you know these things about glaucoma, you can be sure that you understand the seriousness of the disease and what you need to do to prevent yourself from suffering from it.
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