Glaucoma: Optician Prescribes Regular Examination

An Optician at the Garki Hospital Abuja, Dr Loveth Okorie, on Tuesday advised that children from the ages five with family history of glaucoma should be taken to routine eye examination.

Okorie told reporters in Abuja that routine eye examination was important, especially for children to prevent loss of eyesight when glaucoma was detected early.

According to her, glaucoma can be hereditary which runs in the family and that many people do not have the signs thereby posing a huge threat to their sights.

“Glaucoma is an eye disease that gradually causes vision loss. It happens when the optic nerve, which carries images from the eye to brain, becomes damaged.

“This results in gradual vision loss, usually beginning on the side vision and slowly moving inward until the vision is lost, if left untreated. “According to her, when the pressure in the eye is too high, it pushes on the cells that make up the optic nerve over time.

“ This pressure damages the cells and eventually causes them to die. Damage to the optic nerve can happen slowly, so it is difficult to notice at first.

“One cannot feel the pressure that causes glaucoma but an eye exam is needed to check the pressure and the health of your optic nerve. “

Okorie said that anyone could get glaucoma but that, older people, especially after the age of 60, people with family history of glaucoma, were prone to it.

She said others were people of African and Asian heritage and people with a high eye pressure (10p), people who were very near – sighted.

“People who use steroids to treat conditions such as asthma and people who have had eye injuries or surgery, which can damage the pressure regulating systems of the eye.“

According to her, Open –Angle Glaucoma is normally painless and may only be noticeable after vision loss has progressed to the centre of the visual field.

“ It is important to catch and treat this type of glaucoma early to help keep as much of the vision as soon as possible.

“This is because about half of the people who have glaucoma do not even about to know it,’’ she said.

Okorie said there were medications available to lower the pressure in the eye adding, that laser therapy or surgery could be used if the medications were not enough.

She noted that the treatment must be started early because once vision was lost, it could not be recovered.