Glaucoma is a serious eye disease that can cause blindness, mainly due to increased pressure inside the eye that damages the optic nerve.
The disease can occur at any age, but is much more common after age 60 and in the elderly.
It affects men and women equally, while it has a clear ethnic preference, affecting the African American and Hispanic American population more frequently and in more aggressive forms.
There are several forms of glaucoma, the main ones being the glaucoma “open angle” (which is the most common form among the elderly) and the glaucoma “closed angle“, where angle refers to the area of the eye between the iris and cornea, from which aqueous humor normally flows, on whose volume the eye’s internal pressure depends.
A third type of glaucoma is congenital glaucoma, due to an eye malformation present from birth and characterized by very early onset.
Children with congenital glaucoma usually have large eyes because the heavy pressure within the eyeball results in “wearing down” of the tissues.
