Gabe's Page: Updated eye appt.

Sunday, June 13, 2010

Updated eye appt.

Gabe had an eye exam on Wednesday. It was in office and Gabe was a real trooper again! The nurses and our doctor was just amazed at his language in 9 months! Dr. could tell that his pressure still looks very good and there are no cataracts forming!
Yay!!
We will head to Munson in Dec. for another under anesthesia eye exam and we are going to order him transitions lenses in the next couple of weeks. Dr. has seen the transitions help some people with glaucoma with the brightness and sun.
I have to say that I was filled with a lot of anxiety for this appt. We have not seen any changes in his vision at home, but it is in the back of my mind..."what if..." After all this little boy has already been through, I do not want him to worry about this!
Summer is here and Gabe Xulu is enjoying the outdoors...he would be outside 24 hrs a day! He loves the trampoline and the sandbox! We cannot wait until beach weather is here to stay!

1 comment:

KristiJune 13, 2010 at 10:26 AM
Hmm, must have been something in the weather ~ Darcy had an eye exam on Thursday. However ours was for pre-op. Her glaucoma is not responding to drops quite well enough. We did get some encouragement though, off to blog about it right now...
Gabe is darling as usual!
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About Glaucoma

Glaucoma is a condition in which elevated pressure inside the eye contributes to damage of the optic nerve, which may eventually lead to complete vision loss. There are usually no symptoms early in the disease, but in later stages it can cause loss of peripheral vision, tunnel vision and eventually complete blindness. (Gabe's type of glaucoma-congenital is not like other late (senior) onset glaucoma and is not at this time expected to cause complete blindness).

www.glaucoma.org

www.glaucomafoundation.org

www.glaucomaweb.org

www.nei.nih.gov/health/glaucoma/glaucoma_facts.asp

To understand the basic mechanism let me give you an analogy. Imagine a sink with a water tap. The tap is on and water flows at a constant rate into the sink ; while the drainage hole of the sink is unblocked the sink will not overflow. Consider the eye: fluid (aqueous) is produced at a constant rate by the ciliary processes (see figure 1) which flows around the lens into the anterior chamber and drains into the angle between the cornea (window of the eye) and the iris (colored part of the eye) . This drainage angle is like the drainage hole of the sink; if it becomes blocked then fluid builds up and because the eye is a closed chamber, instead of overflowing the pressure rises within the eye. There are three main consequences of raised intraocular pressure:-

the infant's eye is very elastic and the rise in pressure results in an abnormal increase in the size of the eyeball.
the cornea is normally clear because there is a special layer of cells (endothelium) lining it on the inside which pumps water out of the cornea continuously; raised intraocular pressure affects this pumping action adversely and causes water logging in the cornea which makes the cornea hazy and, in severe cases, opaque.
the main danger of raised pressure within the eye (intraocular pressure) is that it eventually damages the optic nerve irreversibly. The optic nerve is the cable that takes the images the eye receives to the ‘seeing centre' (visual cortex) of the brain; damaged cable means bad or no images, depending on the degree of damage.

In congenital glaucoma there is abnormal development of the drainage angle such that it is blocked by abnormal tissue referred to as Barkans membrane after the man who first suggested its presence in such eyes. In our analogy imagine that someone has placed a film of cellophane over the drainage hole of the sink; now the sink will overflow. Similarly the pressure in the eye will go up.

Sunday, June 13, 2010

Updated eye appt.

1 comment:

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