Tell us about you

You or a member of your family has been told that you have glaucoma. Or, you have had glaucoma for some time and are concerned that the treatment you’re receiving isn’t right for you. To help you answer the many questions about this common eye disease, we wrote this guide to give authoritative answers, easily understood explanations, helpful suggestions, and life-style advice. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have a medical background, since the guide is written in plain English. Most people with glaucoma retain good vision and live a normal life. The solutions given here can take the stress out of dealing with glaucoma and should maximize the chance that no further injury to your ability to see will occur.

When someone comes for a glaucoma consultation for the first time, we often start by asking: “Tell us about you?” Getting to know each other is the most important aspect of a long-term relationship. Since glaucoma is a chronic condition, it is important to establish a good relationship with your eye doctor, as this is the person who is going to work with you to help you keep your vision for a very long time. If you’ve come this far, you have already taken an important first step in that process. You are showing an interest in knowing more. The purpose of this guide is to provide information that will help us to inform you and provide the facts that you need to know in order to deal with this treatable condition.

Believe it or not, on hearing the initial news that they might have glaucoma, many people think things like: “I probably don’t really have glaucoma”; or “The diagnosis was wrong”; or, “I never did anything bad to get it, so it couldn’t have happened”. When people deny that they really have glaucoma, the sad result is that some of them stop coming for checkups and do not follow advice about treatments. Some rely only on “alternative” therapies that aren’t proven to work and can actually make things worse. Learning about each patient, who they are, and what they do, helps doctors to find the best solutions to caring for them as individuals. Some people want detailed scientific explanations and like to see pictures. Others need simple solutions and don’t want too much detail. Here, you can get both. If you want the highlights, there are “Take Home” messages at the start of each section with the most important information. For those wishing to know much more in any section, the details follow. If you still want more, online internet links are given and a full online version of this book is available at this site: https://learn.wilmer.jhu.edu/glaucomabook/index.html. An audio version of the book is also available at: https://diagnosisglaucoma.com.

This guide’s sections are designed to answer the many questions that patients have asked us in all our years in practice, as well as the questions that they should have asked. For those who know little about glaucoma, it begins with a simple introduction to the disease. However, those who want in depth information will not be disappointed either. Illustrations assist in understanding concepts, parts of the eye, and surgical treatments. There are not perfect or settled answers to every question about glaucoma. Where there is controversy, we present the different sides of the issue to help you and your doctor to make the better choice for you. Since there is no cure for glaucoma, and no means as of yet to restore vision once it is lost, the guide presents ways to continue life as normally as possible, whatever the stage of glaucoma may be.

Other books have attempted to succeed at these goals, some written by lay persons and others written by doctors with professional writers. We wrote this guide ourselves, with help from our colleagues at the Glaucoma Center of Excellence at the Wilmer Eye Institute, who have many years’ experience with glaucoma. Often, patients come with lists of questions or pages printed from internet sites. We encourage this knowledge-seeking, because there is good evidence that patients who try to learn more will do better in the long run. But, it is very hard to figure out what to believe, even for medically trained people. Dr. Quigley learned this lesson in trying to help a family member with prostate cancer. He was humbled by trying to look at the vast literature, the many web sites, and not knowing what to believe. The right thing to do was to read the comprehensive Guide to Surviving Prostate Cancer written by Dr. Patrick Walsh, a Johns Hopkins colleague and internationally known leader in the field. After reading Dr. Walsh’s book and consulting with him, the right course became clear. It is our hope that this guide will fill a similar need for people with glaucoma.