World Glaucoma Week Raising Awareness to Protect Your Vision

Glaucoma is an eye condition which causes irreparable damage to the eyes. Optic nerves are specifically targeted and the condition, when left untreated gets worse over time. It is primarily characterized with a buildup of pressure inside both eyes. Increased pressure is also known as intraocular pressure which can cause severe damage the optic nerve, which transmits images to your brain. If the damage continues, glaucoma can lead to permanent vision loss. Glaucoma can be hereditary as well. Without proper and timely treatment, glaucoma can cause total permanent blindness within a few years. Most people with glaucoma have no early symptoms or pain. Regular eye checkups are useful as they help diagnose and treat glaucoma before long-term visual loss happens.It mostly affects adults over 40 years of age.

Risk factors associated with Glaucoma generally include family history of glaucoma, having poor vision, having diabetes & use of steroid medications. Most people do not experience any obvious signs & symptoms of glaucoma. There are certain symptoms which must not be ignored. They are loss of peripheral or side vision, sudden eye pain, headache, blurred vision, or appearance of halos around lights, redness in the eye, eye that looks hazy (particularly in infants), nausea or vomiting, eye pain & narrowed vision (tunnel vision). Common causes of Glaucoma include high fluid pressure inside one eye or both the eyes, a blunt or chemical injury to any of the two eyes, severe eye infection, blocked blood vessels inside the eye & inflammatory eye conditions. Glaucoma usually affects both eyes, but it may be worse in one eye than the other.

For diagnosis and treating glaucoma eye doctors normally use eye drops to dilate the pupils. They will also test vision and conduct a general examination of the eyes. Glaucoma tests are painless and take very little time. Glaucoma treatments, prescription eye drops, corneal transplant surgery, laser surgery, or microsurgery and different kinds of eye disease treatments can also be effective in treating glaucoma.

World Glaucoma Week 2017

World Glaucoma Week is for creating glaucoma awareness. March 12 - 18, 2017 is observed as world glaucoma week. The number of people with glaucoma is expected to increase to 76.0 million in 2020. World Glaucoma Week is a joint initiative between the World Glaucoma Association (WGA) and the World Glaucoma Patient Association (WGPA) and it has been highly successful in creating awareness about glaucoma. They are creating awareness concerning glaucoma from the past 8 years. The WGA and WGPA cannot battle this eye disease by themselves and therefore aim to bring together more number of individuals who have wider scope, expertise, and influence to create glaucoma awareness. For instance, social networks or local establishments.

World Glaucoma Week 2017 has the following goals.

· Get national health authorities involved in a plan of action that combats glaucoma blindness.

· Produce educational materials about glaucoma that uses the most current content discussed by experts and distribute this information through the most contemporary strategies of communication.

· Expand the presence of World Glaucoma Association in social networks

· Concentrate our effort and resources on people who are underprivileged for eye care

Eye disease treatments in India are also quite inexpensive. India has become a very popular medical tourism destination for international patients because it is known for cost effective and excellent medical treatments. IndianMedTrip is an upcoming medical tourism company which is now a part of the World Glaucoma Week 2017 & provides assistance to medical tourists by offering wide range of eye treatment packages which are cost- considerate as well as customized according to the needs and requirements of different patients.

SOURCE: https://indianmedtrip.com/articles/world-glaucoma-week/