When it comes to taking care of your eyes, you can never be too careful. And although glaucoma is believed to be the third-highest reason for blindness in the world, affecting more than 4.5 million people, its diagnosis is not an easy job.
Since its symptoms generally do not appear evidently enough or develop quite slowly over a certain period of time, this makes it dangerous as a huge majority of its victim consider treatment only after experiencing sight loss, or when the damage has already been done.
What Causes Glaucoma?
Though the exact cause behind this condition is unknown, many factors can increase its possibility of developing. Many of them include age, ethnicity, family history, racial background, and several other medical conditions such as short-sightedness and diabetes.
The victims of glaucoma include of all ages, but for the most part, it targets adults.
However, there are plenty of treatment options for glaucoma for its different types. But unfortunately, there is no viable cure that exists right now with the possibility to restore the damage already done to the eye due to glaucoma.
Despite that, you can still prevent further damage with the help of medications or surgery.
Options For Glaucoma Treatment
To prevent vision loss from glaucoma, it is essential that you take medications regularly.
You will have to work with your doctor as a team, jointly fighting against this serious eye condition.
Your doctor may have several treatment options, which may include:
Eye Drops
The build-up pressure in your eye and controlling it requires you to be regular and punctual with using the eye drops prescribed to you.
Powerful eye drops such as bimatoprost ophthalmic solution careprost get immediately absorbed into your bloodstream, and you better share with your doctor any other medicine that you are taking at the time so that he can evaluate if using them together is safe for you.
Pills
If the eye drops do not work well for you in controlling your IOP (intraocular pressure), your eye doctor may also prescribe you pills for glaucoma.
Furthermore, you should know that these pills replace eye drops in systemic side effects, as well as reducing the eye fluid (aqueous humor) production which gives rise to high eye pressure.
Surgical Procedure
Surgical procedure may only be prescribed only when other treatments fail to bring out the desired results, or the side effects become insufferable for you.
And there are various surgical methods for different types of glaucoma condition such as argon laser trabeculoplasty (ALT) for open-angle glaucoma, laser peripheral iridotomy (LPI) for angle-closure glaucoma, and many more.
Are There Any Other Options?
Yes, better management of glaucoma can help you live your life in a way much better way, but if the disease has already damaged your eyes you better resort to effective treatment options.
