Is Surgery A Good Option To Treat Glaucoma?

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If you are serious about keeping your vision and maintaining your eye health, then you will want to make sure that you have regular exams. Screening for glaucoma is a quick and easy test, yet many people do not get it done. It is a serious tragedy that so many people are going blind because of a disease that can be treated by medication or surgery.

Glaucoma is a term that doctors have given to four eye diseases. What the four types of glaucoma have in common is how they destroy vision. Glaucoma occurs when the optic nerve becomes destroyed due to pressure or lack of blood supply. Doctors are not sure exactly why this happens in some people and not in others. The people at highest risk of glaucoma are black people, people over 40, and anyone with a history of the disease in their family. Doctors will first try to treat glaucoma with medications, but if this doesn’t work then a surgical procedure is the last option. There are two types of operations that can be performed to treat glaucoma; traditional and laser.

There are two types of surgeries that can be performed on glaucoma patients; one is traditional and the other is laser surgery. A laser trabeculoplasty procedure is used to treat open-angle glaucoma by making holes in the drainage channels in the eyes. Trabeculectomy is a traditional operation in which a surgeon cuts a tiny hole into the sclera, or white part of the eye, in order to help drainage. Drain implantation seems pretty obvious by the name, and involves placing a drainage tube within the eye. The last type of procedure is called cyclophotocoagulation and it involves the use of a laser on the surface of the affected eye. The laser targets the part of the eye that produces fluid in the hope of disrupting the process. This operation is the riskiest and can cause loss of eyesight.

Any type of surgery is very risky, which is why doctors will make sure that they try every other treatment first. The different operations for glaucoma are based on exactly what the doctor needs to do for the patient. Making sure that you have regular eye exams can hopefully stop you from ever having to go through any type of operation on your eyes.