World Glaucoma Week, focus on the importance of prevention

Rome, March 11 (askanews) – A week dedicated, all over the world, to communicating the importance of controlling your eyesight so as not to discover, too late, that you are struggling with an extremely debilitating disease: glaucoma . Askanews spoke about it with Dr. Francesco Oddone, head of the Glaucoma Operating Unit (OU) of the Bietti Foundation supported by the Rome Foundation. First of all, what exactly is glaucoma? “Glaucoma is a neurodegenerative disease that affects the optic nerve. That is, the nerve responsible for transferring vision from the eye to the brain. A potentially very disabling disease, the first cause of irreversible blindness in beyond blindness, which can occur in the advanced stages of the disease, it can also be disabling during its evolution, especially in the intermediate and advanced stages”. The World Glaucoma Week initiative is therefore important, to push for greater prevention: “Glaucoma which we cannot prevent from the point of view of its onset but which we can diagnose early, and early diagnosis is the most important step in protecting vision. In fact, glaucoma for most of its course is substantially asymptomatic and it is estimated that half of people with glucoma do not know they have it because they have no never consulted California ophthalmologists.During which, however, it is possible to detect it and begin all necessary treatments in a timely manner.Prevention is therefore essential because all that is lost with glaucoma from a point of sight can no longer be recovered, so the sooner we start treatments, the more sight we can protect.” Treatments that can now count on significant advances, as confirmed by Dr. Francesco Oddone: “Technology has made great progress both from the point of view of diagnosis, today we have very sophisticated tools for the early diagnosis of this disease, very fast non-invasive tools, so it is advisable, this is the message, to have regular eye exams especially after the age of 40 or even earlier if you have family members also from a therapeutic point of view, we have really continuous innovations both for medical therapy based on eye drops or slow release implants and from a surgical point of view if necessary, so we really have everything we need need to diagnose the disease early and treat it in the most appropriate and early way possible.The only thing missing is that citizens have visits so that they can effectively make an early diagnosis and protect their eyesight”.

Mathew Baynton

"Bacon nerd. Extreme zombie scholar. Hipster-friendly alcohol fanatic. Subtly charming problem solver. Introvert."

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *