News
Latest Glaucoma innovations
Just a few years ago, glaucoma was thought to be solely a disease of high pressure inside the eyeball. Your ophthalmologist would place great importance on the measurement of pressure. He or she would then visually inspect the health of the Optic nerve, which connects the brain with the eye, and can be seen through the pupil.
But new technology has allowed us to recognize glaucoma earlier. And surprising new research has provided us with the most important new diagnostic test in nearly 100 years.
In glaucoma, it used to be believed, high pressure within the eyeball itself caused damage to the Optic nerve in the back of the eye, resulting in gradual and progressive vision loss if untreated. But there were patients who didn’t fit that definition. Some people were able to tolerate the high pressures without damage, whereas others suffered damage without ever having high pressures. So the measurement of eye pressure missed diagnosing nearly half of patients. Yet patients still refer to the eye pressure measurement as their “glaucoma test.”
Within the last two years, a simple measurement has proven to be a better predictor of glaucoma than eye pressure itself!
A 10-second, painless test called pachymetry measures the thickness of the clear cornea tissue in the front of the eye. The average cornea is only about one-fortieth of an inch thick. But small differences in this measurement make a dramatic difference in the likelihood of someone losing vision from glaucoma. It turns out that patients with thin corneas are much more likely to have glaucoma than patients with thick corneas. Naturally, the instruments that are used to take this measurement must be extremely accurate. They have since become an important part of the initial evaluation of a patient suspected of having glaucoma.
There are other new technologies used to follow patients over time who either have glaucoma or are suspected of having it.
Vision loss doesn’t occur until the Optic nerve in the back of the eye suffers significant damage. By diagnosing subtle changes in the appearance of the nerve, the doctor can then modify his or her treatment of the patient to prevent the irreversible vision loss caused by glaucoma.
A doctor’s assessment by looking through your pupil does not do this with high accuracy. Fortunately, there are now ultra-high magnification digital cameras that take a 3-D image of the nerve through the pupil of the eye. And because they are connected to a computer, the images from different examination dates can be compared with extreme accuracy. This allows the doctor to determine if the nerve is unchanged or whether there is progression of glaucoma, even when eye pressures seem to be under control!
Nearly 2% of adults over the age of 40 years-old have glaucoma. And despite efforts at public education, more than half of those people do not even know it because they do not see an eye care professional. If you are a patient with glaucoma, or who is at increased risk of glaucoma because of family history, diabetes, hypertension or black skin color, you owe it to yourself to be examined on a regular basis for this painless eye disease that silently steals eyesight.