The Best Glaucoma Treatment Options To Protect Your Vision, According to a Harvard Eye Doctor
While glaucoma can't be cured, you can halt its progression and safeguard your sight
About 3 million people in the United States have glaucoma, and it’s the second leading cause of blindness worldwide, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While there is no cure for this group of eye diseases, there are treatments that can halt progression and prevent vision loss. Here, we’re detailing what exactly glaucoma is, plus the most common glaucoma treatment options that can help preserve your sight.
What is glaucoma?
“The term glaucoma refers to a group of diseases that cause permanent damage to the optic nerve, which is the cable that connects the eye to the brain and allows us to see,” explains glaucoma surgeon Inas Aboobakar, MD, an ophthalmology hospitalist at Massachusetts Eye and Ear and an instructor in ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School.
There are four main types of primary glaucoma, or glaucoma that is not caused by another medical condition. Open-angle glaucoma is the most common, affecting 90 percent of Americans with glaucoma. The others are normal-tension glaucoma, angle-closure glaucoma and congenital glaucoma.
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“The root cause of glaucoma is not yet fully understood. High eye pressure, which results from impaired function of the eye’s drainage pathway, is an important risk factor for the disease. The high eye pressure causes death of cells in the optic nerve,” says Dr. Aboobakar.
But this is not the case for everybody. “A large proportion of patients with glaucoma do not have high eye pressure, and their optic nerves are susceptible to damage even at normal eye pressures,” she adds.
Effective glaucoma treatment options
“Unfortunately, there is no way to reverse damage from glaucoma once it has occurred,” Dr. Aboobakar says. “All currently available treatments focus on reducing eye pressure to keep the disease from progressing.”
That’s why—even though available treatments are effective—it’s critical to catch glaucoma early by going for regular eye exams, especially if you have additional risk factors. “Once glaucoma is diagnosed, medical, laser or surgical treatment to lower eye pressure is warranted,” says Dr. Aboobakar. Here are four treatment options that can help:
Glaucoma treatment: Prescription eye drops
The most common medicinal treatment is prescription eye drops that work to lower intraocular pressure and keep glaucoma from getting worse. Depending on the type of eye drops your doctor prescribes, they achieve this by either helping drain excess fluid in your eye or by reducing the amount of fluid your eye makes.
Glaucoma treatment: Laser therapy
Laser treatment, also known as laser trabeculoplasty, is when your doctor aims a laser into your eye to help the fluid drain from your eyes. It may sound scary, but the painless treatment works well for most people and the effects last for a while. That said, it does eventually wear off and another laser treatment or a different treatment may be required. People with glaucoma will also likely need to continue to use eye drops after getting laser treatment.
Glaucoma treatment: Surgery
The final prescription glaucoma treatment option is surgery, of which there are three different types: trabeculectomy (which creates a new pathway for fluid to drain), glaucoma implant surgery (which implants a drainage device into the eye) and minimally-invasive glaucoma surgery (which improves fluid flow out of the eye). Like the other treatments, these are all meant to lower pressure in the eye and keep your vision from getting worse.
Glaucoma treatment: Lifestyle changes
“In addition to these treatments, lifestyle changes that may lower risk of disease worsening include a diet high in antioxidants and nitric oxide, aerobic exercise and smoking cessation,” says Dr. Aboobakar.
Follow a healthy diet: Antioxidants, especially lutein and zeaxanthin, help protect the eye from oxidative damage to maintain sharp vision. Meanwhile, nitric oxide plays many roles in maintaining eye health, including helping to regulate pressure in the eye and maintain adequate tear production.
Foods that contain both antioxidants and nitrates, the precursor to nitric oxide, include beets, leafy greens, broccoli, carrots and dark chocolate.
Get regular exercise: As for exercise, a review in Frontiers in Medicine found aerobic exercise helps increase tear production, regulates intraocular pressure and mitigates damage caused by pressure increases.
Quit smoking: Finally, as is the case with many illnesses, smoking has been found to play a role in glaucoma progression. Quitting can help safeguard against blurred vision and vision loss.
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