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Dr. Gong discusses the symptoms and treatments of glaucoma and explains how it is diagnosed.
Dr. Gong:
Glaucoma is optic nerve damage.
You have a nerve that enters and exits the back of your eye and that’s how you interpret what you see. So when you have damage to that optic nerve you have glaucoma.
The symptoms of glaucoma can be loss of side vision, loss of central vision, just blurred vision, in some cases people do report that they have a slight pain in their eye but most people do not know they have it as far as pain.
The way that we diagnose glaucoma is we take a good case history. If you have a family history of glaucoma the highest risk factor being if a sibling has it, your brother or sister.
Second highest is if your mother has it then of course from then on it gets further reduced.
We take a good case history. We also take the pressure and if you have heard of the air puff test, many places do that. We in our office do the Goldman test and it’s just a blue light test is what we call it and we measure the actual pressure in your eye.
In some cases if you have a high pressure and depending on how many risk factors you have we go ahead and treat it.
And in some cases your pressures are low so we have to also look at the risk factors because some people, whether its low or high it’s mainly the optic nerve damage.
So whether you have high pressure or low pressure it could still damage your optic nerve but the higher the pressures are the higher risk is.
We also can measure how thick or thin the front part of your eye is and that’s called the cornea. We look at your optic nerve. We like to dilate and do visual fields.
There are also some machines out that can also take kind of like an X-ray of the optic nerve.
Treatment for glaucoma include medication and in some cases, surgery.
About Dr. Aleta Gong, O.D., F.A.A.O., F.C.O.V.D.:
Dr. Aleta Gong, O.D., F.A.A.O., F.C.O.V.D., is a graduate of the University of California San Diego and the Southern California College of Optometry. She is a Board Certified Fellow of the American Academy of Optometry and of the College of Optometrists in Vision Development. She has had extensive training at several hospitals and has been trained in specialty contacts, ocular disease, and vision therapy.
She is an active member of the American Optometric Association, and is past president of the Arizona Optometric Association. She also has been one of two state directors for the Special Olympics Opening Eyes Program since 2001.
Presently, she is the state liaison for the nurse’s vision screening program for Arizona. She was a state board proctor for the Arizona licensing board from 1993 to 2001. Dr. Gong has been chosen to be a C.O.P.E. reviewer for national lectures. Dr. Gong also started the InfantSEE® program for Arizona.
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