The World is Beautiful, Save Your Sight - Dr Onubuogu-Gilbert Indarling
The Nigerian Optometric Association joins eye health organizations and eyecare professionals worldwide for World Glaucoma Week, March 6 to 12, 2022.
The observation is designed to spread awareness and understanding about the importance of early detection of glaucoma, the world’s leading cause of blindness, through regular eye check-ups.
Glaucoma is an eye disease. More specifically, it is a disease that affects the optic nerve initially causing a loss of peripheral vision (in the visual field) in patients If it is not detected early on and properly treated, it may progress towards a more serious vision loss and affect central vision.
Many of the glaucomas have a genetic basis and actually in most of them there is an elevation of the intraocular pressure that, together with other factors, causes damage to the optic nerve and provokes an early death of the nerve cells that compose it.
One of the main risk factors for glaucoma is high eye pressure. The disease incidence also increases with age. Therefore, it is more frequent among people older than 40, and especially among seniors over 60 years old.
People with direct relatives (father, mother, siblings) having suffered from glaucoma, as well as people with high myopia (over 6 diopters) or people with a medical history of eye traumas are also at a higher risk of having the disease.
Glaucoma is the first cause of irreversible blindness worldwide. Moreover, for every case that is diagnosed and controlled, there is a person walking down the street who doesn’t know that he or she has glaucoma. It is estimated that approximately 50% of glaucoma cases are undiagnosed. While it is true that the disease is incurable, it is also true that 90% of the blindness caused by glaucoma could be prevented by early detection and treatment.
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