- There is no cure for glaucoma, which is why it is important to limit its progression before it causes irreversible blindness.
- This eye disease is characterized because it is asymptomatic in most cases.
- The lack of culture to attend periodic check-ups with ophthalmology professionals means that it is not detected from its early stages.
Although not always discussed on the subject, the Glaucoma has become one of the main visual health problems in our country. There are more and more people affected and, in part, it is due to the lack of the culture of periodic reviews. For this reason, most cases are identified until they are in advanced stages.
With the above in mind, the director of the Institute of Security and Social Services for State Workers (ISSSTE), Pedro Zenteno, said that work must be done to promote early and timely detection of asymptomatic or silent diseases such as glaucoma.
From factors such as race to high rates of diabetes affect Mexicans
For her part, the ophthalmologist with a high specialty in this pathology of the Regional Hospital “Gral. Ignacio Zaragoza”, Adriana Itzel Guerrero Moreno, reported that the Glaucoma is a chronic, progressive optic neuropathy, and it is usually bilateral. It affects the optic nerve in a structural and functional way. In addition, it is the cause of low vision and, in advanced stages, total blindness.
“This disease can affect absolutely all of us, simply because of race and the high rates of hypertension, diabetes, and hereditary factors that our population has.”
It should be noted that glaucoma is the second cause of irreversible blindness in Mexico and in the world. Data from the Financial and Actuarial Report (IFA) of ISSSTE 2022 reveal that in the course of a year the organization treated one million 48 thousand 700 patients with diabetes and one million 271 thousand 492 with arterial hypertension, in people over 20 years of age. This is equivalent to a prevalence of these conditions in the beneficiary population of 9.8 percent and 11.9 percent, respectively. This risk factor for glaucoma is of that magnitude, Guerrero Moreno noted.
Glaucoma in Mexico
Sources from the Ministry of Health (SSa) estimate that in our country 1.5 million people live with this disease and 50 percent of them are unaware that they have it because they do not present perceptible symptoms.
“It is very important to make the population aware of the importance of going to regular check-ups with the ophthalmologist at least once a year in general. And if there is any of the aforementioned risk factors or others, such as having a history of high myopia or having suffered eye trauma, it is best to go two to three times a year”.
The objective of these preventive reviews is to take intraocular pressure and, if necessary, complement it with an imaging study.
“We can do tomographies of the nerve, visual fields, which precisely allow us to evaluate both its structure and its function. And if we make an early and timely diagnosis, we can prevent this from generating changes in vision and patients from reaching total blindness”.
Guerrero Moreno affirmed that the loss of vision caused by Glaucoma is characterized by a narrowing of the visual field, which is all we see. This change will be from the periphery to the center, generating in advanced stages an approach as if we were seeing through a tube. This is slow but progressive and can lead to total vision loss that cannot be recovered.
After the age of 40, we are all at risk of developing this disease. From the age of 60 it increases and multiplies after the age of 80. He specified that there are two types of glaucoma, open-angle and closed-angle. Of these, the first is the most common and is usually asymptomatic.
Also read:
Glaucoma, why is it the leading cause of irreversible blindness?
Diabetic retinopathy, the main cause of blindness in Mexico
8 out of 10 cases of blindness are preventable and some are curable: UNAM