Differences Between Glaucoma and Ocular Hypertension

Greetings to all and sundry,

It is another beautiful day today and we are once again pleased to come your way today with another beautiful edition of our ocular health episodes where we share, learn and discuss issues concerning your ocular health. Before we move into today's topic of discussion though, we do hope that you our dear reader are doing amazing and having a wonderful time.

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Today want to look at one of the conditions that is making waves across Africa and the globe with respect to ocular health and a differential diagnosis that sometimes scares people a lot. It is quite similar in a lot of ways and many may misunderstand one for the other. We hope that through this writeup we would be enlightened better.

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Introduction

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Glaucoma is a condition of the eye where the optic nerve dies off at a rapid rate than what it ought to be physiologically. This is normally as a result of the pressure in the eye rising above the threshold of 20mmhg causing the nerves to be pressed such that they undergo apoptosis. This has become the general definition of Glaucoma and how many see it, however there is a bit more to it and Glaucoma can be complicated in different scenarios.

One of such scenario is when the pressure of the eye is normal or within normal limits but the cells of the optic nerve may still be undergoing apoptosis just as it may be seen in a glaucomatous damage. This is what is referred to as normal tension glaucoma. Glaucoma may also be very damaging in acute cases such that vision may be lost within a very short period and would be irreversible too.

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Because of how Glaucoma has been tagged with pressure, normally when patients come in and they want to inform their healthcare provider that they have been diagnosed of glaucoma they say that the have been diagnosed to have the ocular pressure to be high which is also another condition or diagnosis on its own. This condition is known as ocular hypertension and not glaucoma.

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Difference Between the Two

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The question then would what is the difference between the two? Most people if not all can easily identify the word hypertension with a rise in pressure and so to say ocular hypertension one can easily tell that the pressure in the eye has gone up. But then here is the case we are saying that in glaucoma too the pressure of the eye has gone up, so then how can we tell the difference.

The truth is that the difference can not be known by you as a patient but you can be told and it becomes your responsibility to keep your diagnosis in your mind and use the right the expression for your health provider when you go for healthcare so that you may not be mistreated for something that is not your diagnosis.

There is not cause for alarm though since both conditions have similar management protocols which all focuses on bringing the pressure down, however making your doctor understand that you have been diagnosed of ocular hypertension and not glaucoma may save you some cost on test you may have been asked to do in addition to certain treatments that you may not have needed.

Ocular Hypertensive patients too also have a high chance of developing glaucoma and so it helps put you on the radar for detailed care such that it may easily be captured should that happened. One thing we can as a difference between the two though is that, in glaucoma there is a damage of the optic nerve with or without a rise in pressure whereas in ocular hypertension there is that persistent high pressure without the accompanying glaucomatous damage.

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Conclusion

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And so there you have, understanding glaucoma and ocular hypertension diagnosis and been keen on where you fall so you treatment may be done accordingly. We hope that you learned a thing or two from what we had to share today. We thank you all for reading and for your time.

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