Diagnosed with Glaucoma: What Next?

Glaucoma is a chronic, progressive disease. It poses a diagnostic dilemma for ophthalmologists and the patients get frustrated because it is often diagnosed at the advanced stage and they are unaware that they even have a disease. As there are no symptoms initially, they are unsure if they should continue the medicines or not and for doctors, it is difficult to decide whether to start treatment or not, when to start, when to stop, when to change, add-on or switch to surgery.

Every ophthalmologist may follow their own protocol in this disease. But as I said it is a chronic progressive disease. What happens is the person visits an ophthalmologist with a non-specific symptom, sometimes not specific to the disease even and gets to know the possibility of having this disease even with a good vision. Yes, this is possible and you would be lucky if you get informed early about the possibility of this disease because there are so many treatment options available if detected early.

As soon as you get to know about the possibility of having glaucoma, get a baseline visual field examination done, and diurnal intraocular pressure changes recorded. The vision best corrected and uncorrected both should be recorded at the first sitting for follow-ups. At this stage, you may not require initiation of the medicines but in advanced cases, immediate treatment is required.

Remember, it is a progressive disease. So, regular yearly followup is required. At times, it may seem useless to the patient but it must not be overlooked that the disease progression can be halted or at least slowed down if not completely stopped.

Also, not to forget, once the damage has occurred, it cannot be reverted by any means. So, early diagnosis and initiating treatment with any sign of progression is the key. Even after initiating treatment, there is no single drug that fits all. For every patient, the treatment is individualized with close follow-up with the recording of vision and intraocular pressure at every followup which is monthly at this time.

This is just a drop of knowledge from the whole sea, in terms of information about glaucoma.

The Points Not to Forget Are:

1. It is a chronic progressive disease.
2. Early diagnosis is the key.
3. Regular follow-up with compliance to treatment can slow down the progression.
4. Patience is important for both the doctors and the patient.
5. Once the vision is lost due to glaucoma, it cannot be got back by any measure.

For more information consult a glaucoma specialist online --> https://www.icliniq.com/ask-a-doctor-online/eye-care-ophthalmologist/glaucoma