Saving sight

Glaucoma is a disease that can silently steal your sight.  High pressure inside the eye causes damage to the optic nerve. 

There is a new way to lower pressure and save sight. Warning: some of the video is graphic. 

Patsy Hall still has sight to read, even though she's had glaucoma for more than 30 years and she can no longer take glaucoma medicine because she's allergic to it.
    
"When the pressure goes up, then I have to have surgery.  And it gets it down again," Hall said.

Recently, Hall had a new surgery to lower pressure in her eyeball.  It's called trabectome.  Dr. Michael Stiles said think of it as angioplasty for the eye.
 
The surgery unclogs the blockage that backs up fluid in the eye's meshwork or drainage system.  It's an alternative to doing a bypass operation, the standard surgery for glaucoma.

"The rate of complications with this procedure are by far way below the typical complication rate you see with standard glaucoma surgery," Dr. Stiles said.

Dr. Stiles goes in from the side between the cornea and the iris to remove the diseased meshwork.

It's done with a device called trabectome that heats and vacuums out the tissue.  The doctor said 80 percent of patients see their pressure drop by a third.  Maybe not as much as it would  drop with standard surgery, but with fewer complications.

"It's a very exciting time in glaucoma, because this is one of the first major breakthroughs," Dr. Stiles said.

No study directly comparing trabectome to standard surgery has been done yet, though Hall's pressure is down and her sight is saved. 

You may not know you have glaucoma until you lose sight. That's why it's vital to see an eye doctor and find out how often you should get checked. Find out more about who is at risk here.


Meryl Lin McKean, FOX 4 News

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