Glaucoma-- Signs, Stats, and Facts

In many types of glaucoma, the optic nerve is extremely damaged even before symptoms begin to appear. Nevertheless, some of the more common symptoms include:

• Eye pain

• Severe headache

• Redness in the eye

• Blurred vision

• Vision loss

Some form of glaucoma currently affects over 3 million people in the United States alone. As mentioned in the “What is glaucoma?” blog post on the discussmed.org website, 90% of those people have open-angle glaucoma, the most common form of glaucoma. The damage induced by glaucoma often occurs before symptoms show resulting in approximately 50% of people with glaucoma not knowing they have it. Additionally, blindness is not a very common symptom, but it still occurs with over 120,000 Americans being blinded by glaucoma. Glaucoma is also more common in African Americans than Caucasians with African Americans 6 to 8 times more likely to develop glaucoma than Caucasians.

Interestingly, while most people with glaucoma are not blinded, it is the second leading cause of blindness around the world. Also, there is currently no cure for glaucoma. However, when it is found early, surgery and medications can be used to halt any vision loss and limit damage to the optic nerve.