I am concerned

Question:

- Hide quoted text — Show quoted text -rk…@failcon.demon.co.uk (Roger King) wrote: > > Well I found out that I had Glaucoma (age 39) when I already had serious >> > damage in my left eye with a presure of 26 so I would definitely advocate >> > trying to get the pressure down –  but then I have a poor family history. >> > Fortunately laser treatment worked well for me and my pressures have been >> > down to 16 for about 4 years now. >> > — >> > Regards, >> > Roger KIng, Cranleigh, Surry, UK >> > rk…@failcon.demon.co.uk >> What is the status of your damage at this point.  Are you >> intimating it stopped dead in its tracks? >Well the pressures are still down but I am not sure if there is more field >damage in my left eye – the right one is still 100% OK.  Are you saying >that more can be done other than keeping the pressures down to a "normal" >level?

Well, I’m not sure more can be done, but depending on other factors, which might be known, that are likely more significant to the mechanism of damage than the pressure, some additional or alternative actions might be taken.  Does the "poor family history" you mention refer to a family history of glaucoma itself, or of other medical problems?  Correcting some other systemic problems could possibly improve the condition of the tissues supporting the optic nerve head that is degenerating.  I have suspected allergies of both permanently and temporarily wrecking various collagen-containing parts of my body at times, but numerous other effects can occur.  Obviously there’s some local factor that is different in the bad eye than in the other.  I have a lot of glaucomatous damage in the left eye and none in the right, and much more of a problem with nasal mucosal atrophy on the same side as the bad eye.  I wouldn’t imply that that particular combination is very common at all, but there are two things I’ve found out:  1) Eye doctors never talk to nose doctors and 2) no doctors ever want to simply compare the patient’s anatomy across his/her axis of symmetry.  Such things make too much sense and not enough money for MDs.  They love the routine ‘come in every month and check your pressure.’  They don’t like to figure anything out.  Check out the Web page whose URL is in the other post of mine on this thread. Ray Chamberlin ra…@sirius.com – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text ->– >Regards, >Roger KIng, Cranleigh, Surry, UK >rk…@failcon.demon.co.uk

Response:

 > Well I found out that I had Glaucoma (age 39) when I already had serious > > damage in my left eye with a presure of 26 so I would definitely advocate > > trying to get the pressure down –  but then I have a poor family history. > > Fortunately laser treatment worked well for me and my pressures have been > > down to 16 for about 4 years now. > > — > > Regards, > > Roger KIng, Cranleigh, Surry, UK > > rk…@failcon.demon.co.uk > What is the status of your damage at this point.  Are you > intimating it stopped dead in its tracks?

Well the pressures are still down but I am not sure if there is more field damage in my left eye – the right one is still 100% OK.  Are you saying that more can be done other than keeping the pressures down to a "normal" level? — Regards, Roger KIng, Cranleigh, Surry, UK rk…@failcon.demon.co.uk

Response:

- Hide quoted text — Show quoted text -> Re: I am concerned > ——————————————————————– > From           be…@alumni.EECS.Berkeley.EDU (Beorn Johnson) > Organization   UC Berkeley > Date           21 Jan 1996 23:24:10 GMT > Newsgroups     alt.support.glaucoma > Message-ID     <4duhuq$…@agate.berkeley.edu> > References     1 > ——————————————————————– > responds both in a post and by e-mail to: > Rich Iachetta in <4dgrjl$…@ausnews.austin.ibm.com>: >……….. > The next step up in treatment is laser "surgery".  

There are actually two common laser procedures employed, depending on the way the MD diagnoses your glaucoma or potential glaucoma:      Open-Angle:    argon laser trabeculoplasty      Closed-Angle:  laser iridotomy. These are very different.  The diagnostic distinction, however, may not be all that meaningful.  See:           http://www.dorsai.org:80/~glaucoma/gfaqs.html One thing that this FAQ doesn’t mention in regard to the iridotomy (which is a pretty innocuous quick act) is that the small perforations it puts in your iris decrease your light-level-accommodating ability a little.  They like to poke these holes in eyes with "raised" IOP but which don’t, at the time, show any field defects–in order to prevent (supposedly) such later defects.  I wouldn’t let them do this, because the eye may never develop glaucomatous damage, and if it does, the holes probably won’t slow the progression eventually, anyhow. This is a lay opinion.  Neither timolol nor betaxylol nor laser iridotomy lowered my quite moderate-pressured (22) very glaucomatous eye nor slowed the damage.  One outfit liked to refer to the eye as POAG (open-angle), while the next saw it as angle-closure.  The latter wanted to poke out the good iris also. I said no.  Some three years later, at least, the good eye (IOP only 18) still shows no damage and a year ago field tests showed no damage either. I believe they have more diagnostic capability with automated laser fundoscopy these days, which should detect damage earlier than field testing.  You might check that out. – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text -……… >         Beorn Johnson >         (be…@alumni.eecs.berkeley.edu)

Response:

- Hide quoted text — Show quoted text -> Re: I am concerned > ——————————————————————– > From           rk…@failcon.demon.co.uk (Roger King) > Organization   Failure Control Ltd > Date           Mon, 22 Jan 1996 14:27:53 +0000 > Newsgroups     alt.support.glaucoma > Message-ID     <rking-2201961427530…@failcon.demon.co.uk> > References     1 > ——————————————————————– > In article <4dgrjl$…@ausnews.austin.ibm.com>, iache…@vnet.ibm.com wrote: > > Is 25 a safe IOP to live with or does it NEED to be lower to avoid damage? > > I am also afraid that the condition will just worsen as I get older and if > > it is not responding to the drops now, will I be in trouble later? > Well I found out that I had Glaucoma (age 39) when I already had serious > damage in my left eye with a presure of 26 so I would definitely advocate > trying to get the pressure down –  but then I have a poor family history. > Fortunately laser treatment worked well for me and my pressures have been > down to 16 for about 4 years now. > — > Regards, > Roger KIng, Cranleigh, Surry, UK > rk…@failcon.demon.co.uk

What is the status of your damage at this point.  Are you intimating it stopped dead in its tracks?

Response:

The comment about "eye doctors don’t talk to nose doctors" caught my attention.  I thought I’d comment, since I’ve had chronic sinusitis that has worsened almost in direct proportion to my eye problems. My eye doctors are in a group (Shaeffer Associates in San Francisco) that does a lot of glaucoma research.  During a recent office visit, I mentioned that I was wondering what drug developments were in the works since timolol was almost 20 years old on the market and the various epinephrine precursors (propine, etc.) had been around a while.  The answer was that they were looking at various metabolites of digitalis, of all things.  I commented that this implied that they were still getting results via very systemic control mechanisms that affected the whole body and not just the eye, that all the current drugs must be lowering intraocular presure "at arms length".  The reply?  "Probably several arms lengths, we’re far from knowing the local mechanisms". Hopefully I haven’t misquoted anybody and this was several years ago, so it may be out of date, but it’s still interesting. Now I’ll add my real two cents, "Nose doctors don’t talk to allergy doctors, either.  The pulmonologists don’t talk to the nose doctors. The allergy MDs don’t talk to the environmental health MDs."  You get the idea.  And the poor epidemiologists have to connect all the dots all by themselves. — Truett Lee Smith Tandem Computers, 10100 N. Tantau Ave., LOC 251-04, Cupertino, California 95014-2542 Home: (408) 257-0972   Work: (408) 285-6675 tru…@netcom.COM      smith_tru…@tandem.com 73036….@compuserve.com

Response:

tru…@netcom.com (Truett Smith) wrote: > I’ve had chronic sinusitis that >has worsened almost in direct proportion to my eye problems.

Perhaps they could both be due to a common cause such as hypothyroidism or blood-sugar abnormalities.   Just a thought.

Response:

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