Glaucoma

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Prevent Blindness and other eye health organizations have declared January as National Glaucoma Awareness Month. Prevent Blindness seeks to educate the public on the second leading cause of blindness, following cataracts, by providing free resources via online or by mail through its Glaucoma Learning Center.

I didn’t get up screaming. I didn’t hurl my computer across the room. I didn’t even let my inferiority complex show through the emotions I was feeling. Instead, I calmly and politely wrote a short letter to the news organization explaining what optometrists are, and that glaucoma was what I, as an optometrist, spent most of my days dealing with.

In an effort to take the best care of my glaucoma patients that I can, I’ve made use of a few pearls that have helped me to keep calm in the face of the beast that is glaucoma.

It may be possible to view early changes in the eye before the clinical symptoms of glaucoma become apparent. A better understanding of the structural changes in glaucoma could potentially allow for a better diagnosis of the disease. Using imaging devices, such as the adaptive optics scanning laser ophthalmoscope (AOSLO), clinicians can view sharper and higher-resolution images of the eye than current clinical instruments.

Dr. Lievens shares commentary about his glaucoma lecture at the Primary Care Section of the American Academy of Optometry Diplomate Seminar in Seattle.

Spectral domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) is a landmark diagnostic technology. Clinicians should keep top of mind that SD-OCTs, as sophisticated as they are, do not think or interpret. That is solely the job of the clinician. In addition, visually assessing the retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL) directly can yield more qualitative information than SD-OCT scans provide.

Direct your glaucoma patients to a new consumer-friendly Web site developed by the Glaucoma Foundation, the Alliance for Aging Research, and Merck.