Glaucoma

What is glaucoma?

The term "glaucoma" is used for a group of diseases whose common characteristic is damage to the optic nerve.

The optic nerve is the "cable" that carries visual stimulants from the eye to the brain. Just as the "cables" that we meet in our daily lives consist of numerous thin "wires", so does the optic nerve which is composed of a large number of nerve fibers.

Each fiber of the optic nerve is responsible for conveying visual stimuli from a specific point of our visual field, and the damage to a bundle of these fibers leads to a reduction or loss of vision in the corresponding segment.

The nerve fibers that were unfortunately destroyed can not be regenerated and the part of our visual field in which vision was reduced or lost does not return.

The main problem with the most common form of glaucoma called "chronic simple glaucoma" is the absence of symptoms. The eye does not hurt nor is it easy to "perceive" the reduction of our visual field without the use of specific medical tests.

With its high-tech diagnostic tools that are currently available, the early stages of this very common form of glaucoma can be easily identified, and in conjunction with the latest medications, established glaucoma should be a disease of the past.

However, reality is different. The is a lack of awareness amongst patients so as to promptly visit an ophthalmologist for an examination, resulting in too many glaucoma cases remaining undiagnosed and millions of people around the world to losing their sight without reason.