By SARAH SUTSCHEK
Crystal Bradford didn’t notice her vision loss until she went in for a regular check-up.
Glaucoma didn’t run in the 45-year-old’s family, and because her eye pressure wasn’t high, a common symptom, it took about a year to diagnose.
“When they said glaucoma, the first thing I thought was, ‘You’ve got to be kidding! That’s an old people disease!’ ” said Bradford, who lives in Algonquin. “But that’s a misnomer, too.”
According to the American Optometric Association, glaucoma is the second leading cause of blindness in the United States, behind diabetes.
Glaucoma is an eye disorder leading to progressive damage to the optic nerve, characterized by loss of nerve tissue resulting in loss of peripheral vision. Awareness of the disease might be low, as six out of 10 Americans believe that glaucoma is preventable, according to an American Optometric Association study. It’s not. But it is treatable.
“The only treatments available now are lowering interocular pressure to take the stress off the nerve to help the blood flow,” said Dr. David Rocks of Advanced Eyecare Clinic in Lake in the Hills.
Bradford, who works in Rocks’ office handling insurance, has check-ups with the doctor every three or four months.
The most common treatment is eyedrops used once or twice daily that lower eye pressure. Laser surgery also is an option to open up drainage, and a third treatment is a shunt.
“But that’s more end stage, a last effort and all other medicine isn’t working,” Rocks said.
Out of about 2,000 patients he sees a year, Rocks said, about 150 to 200 of them have glaucoma. It primarily affects the elderly, although there are pediatric forms. Hispanics and African-Americans ages 45 to 65 also are 14 to 17 times more likely to go blind from glaucoma than Caucasians.
A particular problem with glaucoma is that there are no outward symptoms in the first few years of having the disease, Rocks said.
“Once the nerve is damaged, it’s damaged for the rest of your life and can never be repaired,” he said. “You can only hope to slow down the damage.”
The exact cause of glaucoma is unknown, although it usually is associated with an increase in the fluid pressure inside the eye, according to the American Optometric Association. Some forms, called secondary glaucoma, can be caused by injury or other eye diseases.
“They think nutritional supplements may have protective advantages to the optic nerve, but as far as truly avoiding the disease, there’s no magic bullet to avoid glaucoma,” Rocks said. “If it’s in your genetic makeup, it’s kind of unavoidable.”
He recommends regular check-ups every one to two years for people who wear glasses, and an eye exam every two to three years even for people with 20/20 vision.
Bradford has normal-tension glaucoma, which means that her eye pressure stayed within a normal range.
Her daughters remind her every night not to forget her drops.
“You don’t want to skip a dose,” she said. “I think a lot of people because their eyesight doesn’t improve with the drops, they tend to get frustrated and stop taking them. I don’t want to lose any more than I already have.”
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