March 6 is World Glaucoma Day
Glaucoma is a multifactorial disease, but the main cause is a violation of the outflow of intraocular fluid, which leads to increased ocular hypertension, death of retinal and optic nerve cells. The process can cause irreversible blindness without treatment. More than 1,3 million people have glaucoma in Russia. Over the past 10 years the incidence has increased by about 20%.
Anyone who can have glaucoma has a genetic or anatomical predisposition to the development of the disease. However, there are risk groups that have glaucoma more often than others. These are patients of older generation also people with a glaucoma heredity, a high degree of myopia, inflammatory and chronic eye diseases, previously performed eye surgeries, injuries and damage to the eyes and long-term use of steroid drugs.
The most important step to prevent blindness in glaucoma is to conduct a preventive medical examination and prophylactic medical examination with an ophthalmologist once a year.
Glaucoma is a chronic and incurable disease yet, but it can be controlled by slowing down the development and preventing complete vision loss.