GLAUCOMA SURGERY
CO-MANAGEMENT
Glaucoma is a serious eye condition that requires ongoing care to protect your vision. At Complete Family Vision Care Optometry, we provide comprehensive glaucoma co-management services, working closely with specialists to ensure you receive the best possible care.
What is Glaucoma Co-Management?
Co-management involves collaborating with an eye specialist to manage your glaucoma effectively. This approach combines the expertise of your optometrist with that of a glaucoma specialist to provide a well-rounded treatment plan tailored to your needs.
Our Glaucoma Co-Management Services
- Collaborative Care: We work closely with glaucoma specialists to monitor and manage your condition. This includes regular eye exams, monitoring eye pressure, and adjusting treatment plans as needed.
- Personalized Treatment Plans: Your treatment may include prescription eye drops, laser therapy, or surgery. We help coordinate these treatments and ensure you understand each step of the process.
- Ongoing Monitoring: Glaucoma requires regular monitoring to prevent vision loss. We provide comprehensive follow-up care to track your progress and make any necessary adjustments to your treatment.
Why Choose Complete Family Vision Care Optometry for Glaucoma Co-Management?
- Experienced Care: Our team has extensive experience in managing glaucoma, ensuring you receive the highest quality care.
- Close Collaboration: We maintain strong relationships with leading glaucoma specialists to provide you with seamless, coordinated care.
- Patient-Centered Approach: Your health and well-being are our top priorities. We take the time to explain your condition and treatment options, ensuring you feel supported every step of the way.
Types of Glaucoma Surgery
Typically, your eye doctor will perform laser surgery first. These procedures are done on an outpatient basis.
Laser surgeries for glaucoma include:
- Argon laser trabeculoplasty (ALT): This procedure opens blockages in your eye, allowing fluid to drain properly.
- Selective laser trabeculoplasty (SLT): when ALT isn’t fully effective, this procedure may be used. SLT works by aiming a precisely targeted low-level laser at only the spots with elevated pressure.
- Laser peripheral iridotomy (LPI): when the gap between your iris and cornea is smaller than normal, narrow-angle glaucoma may develop. With this kind of glaucoma, fluid and pressure build up in this small area of the eye. Using a laser beam, LPI creates a tiny hole in the iris through which the excess fluid can drain.
- Cyclophotocoagulation: when all other laser treatments do not relieve the fluid buildup and lower pressure, cyclophotocoagulation may be used. This operation aims a laser beam through the sclera and into the ciliary body, which is the part of the eye that produces intraocular fluid. The laser damages the ciliary body so it makes less eye fluid. Cyclophotocoagulation may be repeated over time to keep pressure levels normal.
Conventional non-laser glaucoma surgery:
If laser surgery doesn’t alleviate eye pressure, you may need a different type of procedure.
- Trabeculectomy: a small incision will be made in the white part of your eye to remove some of the inner mesh of tissue, helping the excess fluid to drain. Medication to prevent scar tissue may also be administered. Research shows that this procedure lowers eye pressure in 6-8 out of 10 people and may be most effective in people who haven’t had previous eye trauma or surgery (for glaucoma, retina surgery, cataracts, or eye muscle problems).
- Drainage implant surgery: a tiny tube will be inserted inside your eye to facilitate fluid draining. Many minimally invasive implants are now available.
- Electrocautery: a heat device, called a Trabectome, is used to make a small incision in the drainage tubes of your eye, which sends heat to the inner mesh of tissue and relieves fluid pressure. Electrocautery is less invasive than trabeculectomy or drainage implants.
Risks of Glaucoma Surgery
Benefits of Glaucoma Surgery
The primary risk of glaucoma surgery is that it increases your chances of developing cataracts later on. Other possible risks include:
- Red eyes
- Eye pain
- Abnormal eye pressure – too high, or even too low
- Vision loss
- Eye infection
- Inflammation or bleeding in your eye
When other types of glaucoma treatment are ineffective or unsuitable, glaucoma surgery offers an excellent alternative to prevent damage to your optic nerve and vision loss.
Also, if the opening in your eye begins to close up again, glaucoma surgery can be repeated. If you’ve already lost vision due to glaucoma, surgery will not be able to restore it – but it can prevent further damage and save your remaining sight!
For glaucoma diagnosis and management, be sure to visit our eye doctors for regular comprehensive eye exams.