What are the glaucoma symptoms?
What is glaucoma?
Glaucoma is a group of eye diseases that damage your eye’s optic nerve (essential bundle of nerve cells that carries visual signals from the eye to the brain), causing progressive and irreversible loss of vision. Glaucoma is typically attributable to an accumulation of intraocular pressure, or pressure inside your eye. Such intraocular pressure can injure your optic nerve that transmits images to your brain. If the damage exacerbates, glaucoma can result in long term vision loss or total blindness and is important to know the glaucoma symptoms to prevent this from happening.
What are the two main types of glaucoma?
Open angle, or wide-angle glaucoma, is the most common type of glaucoma. The ‘angle’ refers to the drainage angle at the front of the eye which allows fluid to drain from the eye. In open angle glaucoma, fluid in the eye does not drain out like it should.
Angle closure glaucoma occurs when your eye does not drain fluid as expected, due to a narrow drainage space between your iris (coloured tissue in the eye) and cornea (transparent layer at the front of the eye surface). As a result, your eye pressure accumulates and causes damage to the optic nerve.
What are the symptoms of glaucoma?
The symptoms of glaucoma differ based on how advanced your condition is as well as the type of glaucoma you are suffering from.
Vision with and without glaucoma (Image adapted from: Guide to Good Health)
Symptoms of open-angle glaucoma
- Blind spots in your side or central vision, typically in both eyes
- Tunnel vision when glaucoma worsens
Symptoms of acute angle-closure glaucoma
- Intense headache
- Eye pain
- Nausea
- Vomiting
- Blurred vision
- Halos around lights
- Red eyes
See a doctor once you detect glaucoma symptoms
Glaucoma can lead to blindness if treatment is neglected or ignored. Around 15% of people with glaucoma lose their vision in at least one eye within 20 years despite undergoing treatment.
Intense headaches are symptoms of glaucoma.
Consult your eye doctor immediately if you experience some of the symptoms of acute angle-closure glaucoma, as mentioned above. Book your next eye appointment to get your eyes examined for any possible signs of glaucoma here with Plano.
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Are nerves pain also a result or symptoms of glaucoma
Hi Akundo Caroline! Any sort of pain in the head and eye area could be a symptom of glaucoma. In order to properly diagnose your condition, do seek advice from a qualified eye care professional or a medical doctor. If you wish to know more about the two types of glaucoma, we have an extensive article on each here: https://plano.co/eye-conditions/other-eye-conditions/glaucoma/ AND https://plano.co/eye-conditions/other-eye-conditions/angle-closure-glaucoma/
Very informative I could know about Glucoma
Hi Prakash Mishra. Thank you for the feedback. If you’d like to know more about the 2 different types of glaucoma, you can check out our detailed overviews of the conditions here:
https://plano.co/eye-conditions/other-eye-conditions/glaucoma/
https://plano.co/eye-conditions/other-eye-conditions/angle-closure-glaucoma/
Hi my name is Karina Juman Khan sometime my vision get dazzled what does that means
Hi Karina! There could be a lot of reasons why your vision gets dazzled. Glaucoma might be a reason, but there could be other underlying eye conditions causing it. It would be best to seek advice from an eye care professional as soon as you can.