Glaucoma
Why do we ask?
Glaucoma is a complex suite of diseases, often (but not always) caused by too much fluid pressure inside the eye, leading to inflammatory activity and poor supply of nutrition and oxygen to the optic nerve.
Untreated, glaucoma eventually causes blindness. However, vision loss from glaucoma usually occurs so slowly that people don’t notice until the damage is very advanced. For this reason, surveillance and early detection are critical. Fortunately there are many effective treatments for glaucoma, so long as we know that it’s there.
For most people, glaucoma screening simply involves measuring your eye pressure (our instrument does NOT use a puff of air).
If you have other risk factors, including a family history of glaucoma, an unusual looking optic nerve, myopia, sleep apnoea, steroid use, a history of regular migraines in women, diabetes, high blood pressure, or other features, we will look a little more closely. Among other tests, we may use Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) to analyse the nerves in your eye, or peripheral vision testing to detect subtle defects at the sides of your field of vision. Sometimes we may use a Water Drink Test to investigate your eye pressure in more detail.
If we suspect you have glaucoma, we may monitor you more closely for a time or refer you to an eye specialist to prevent damage to your vision. Regular monitoring remains important.