Glaucoma Surgeons in Lebanon, PA

One of the most important healthcare decisions you will make is your choice of an eye doctor. You certainly want a doctor to do eye exams, but you might find that you one day need a specialist to treat an eye injury or eye disease. Be sure to choose a practice that provides comprehensive treatment and one that has specialists on staff. Many people discover they have an undetected eye disease like glaucoma, which often has no symptoms. Surgery is the eventual treatment, and glaucoma surgeons in Lebanon PA are close by at Eye Consultants of Pennsylvania.

More about glaucoma

Glaucoma is a leading cause of preventable blindness. The silent disease affects millions of Americans each year and about 70 million people worldwide. Glaucoma is a result of internal pressure that builds up in the eye. The pressure can’t be alleviated naturally, and the high pressure damages the optic nerve over time.

There are several forms of glaucoma and all of them can silently rob you of your sight. Left untreated, the continued optic nerve damage can cause blindness. We offer multiple treatments for glaucoma, but surgical intervention is often the preferred method to effectively reduce the internal eye pressure.

Regardless of which form of glaucoma you have, the decline in vision is usually so slow that most people don’t even notice, or they attribute it to natural aging. However, once glaucoma reaches the late stages, significant vision loss can occur due to extensive optic nerve damage that has already taken place.

How is glaucoma treated?

There are several treatments for glaucoma and all of them are aimed at preserving the vision that still remains. Unfortunately, the vision loss that has already occurred cannot be restored. This is why regular eye exams and early detection are so important. This is the reason our physicians strongly recommend annual eye exams. These exams are the only way we can detect optic nerve damage as well as several other eye diseases. During the exam, we perform several tests to detect the early signs of glaucoma.

If you have glaucoma, we use three typical treatments. We first try medications (in pill or eye drop form) to lower the eye pressure. Medications are often effective in the early stages of glaucoma, but if medications do not sufficiently lower the pressure, we may recommend laser trabeculoplasty, a low risk, in-office surgical procedure. This procedure is designed to help the eye drain the internal eye fluid that has built up due to high pressure; draining the fluid lowers the pressure.

If neither of these methods work or if you are not a candidate for these, our glaucoma surgeons will recommend the more traditional form of glaucoma surgery. The surgeon creates a new opening through which the eye fluid will then continuously drain to lower the internal eye pressure.

Come see us

When was your last eye exam? If it’s been a while, come see us. If you are determined to have glaucoma, our glaucoma surgeons are right here in Lebanon PA on Norman Drive. Give us a call today at 610-378-8500 or schedule an online appointment at the Eye Consultants of Pennsylvania website. We can’t wait to see you.