Oct Glaucoma is a test for this medical condition and is done to see how things are.
One of the leading causes of blindness in the world is glaucoma, it’s a medical condition where there happens some damage to the optic nerve cells this condition has no noticeable symptoms so the early diagnosis is mostly difficult and in the same way for successful treatment of glaucoma it requires regular exams and glaucoma test results.
Glaucoma progresses very gradually. it’s not rapid at all so it takes some time to notice the changes and Glaucoma is such a thing that it can cause irreversible damage to the optic nerve which could cause vision loss or trouble doing everyday tasks and activities, like driving. There are few tests available for glaucoma which help in diagnosis this condition and sometimes treating it. Down below I have tried to some up everything related to Oct glaucoma.
what you will read next :
How often should a person test for oct glaucoma?
In general, if a person is older than 40 and has a family history of this disease in particular, an eye exam every one or in two years is important . If any person in the family has glaucoma or had it previously or any condition which could contribute to the disease, like diabetes, one may need his eyes to be checked every year so that damage is least. There are certain characteristics which warrant for more frequent testing for the glaucoma those factors are following but to keep in mind the person with following traits is at a higher risk to be diagnosed with glaucoma :
- Age: If a person is 65 years old or older, he’s or she’s at a higher risk of developing glaucoma.
- Family history: If someone in the family had glaucoma, then ones is at a higher risk to develop glaucoma.
- Race: If a person is from African-American race he is four times more likely to develop glaucoma than other races.
- Health: If person has diabetes, one is more likely to develop this medical condition that is glaucoma.
- Eyesight: If a person is nearsighted, he has more probability of developing the glaucoma.
- Corneal thickness: If the corneal thickness is thinner than usual in a person , he’s more likely to develop the glaucoma, as the thinner corneal thickness leads to peripheral vision loss, so we can do a visual field test to measure the peripheral vision.
There are many ways available to perform the field vision test, however usually only one eye is tested at a time using a specialized instrument meant for this purpose. The test begins when a person is seated in front of a machine, and is asked to look into it and to focus on the light ahead.
During the time of test, a faint light will appear at different positions in the field of vision then the person will be asked to press a button each time he detects the light. Worse results with the past of time may indicate glaucoma progression. Person should ask the eye doctor to explain the exam and the test results so that one can know whether or not person is experiencing peripheral eyesight loss.
What are the characteristics of Oct Glaucoma?
One major advantage of the procedure of OCT is its ability to show the detailed, quantitative information about the various retinal layers, that corresponds to tissue sections on a histology slide.
So, all together down below we have discussed the various tissue structures that are affected by progression of glaucoma and then will provide practical tips for using the OCT to monitor those. Glaucoma is such a thing that is characterized by loss of retinal ganglion cells and their adjacent axons, and by the remodeling or reshaping of the optic nerve head, that manifests as neuroretinal rim narrowing, optic disc excavation and the displacement of lamina cribrosa.
The ONH is exactly formed by the axons of the retinal ganglion cells, the blood vessels and the glial tissue. The axons exit the eye through the neural canal opening and they are supported by the lamina cribrosa which is an essential connective tissue structure, that comprises the floor of the cup called physiologic cup.
In addition to this, the connective tissue in the ONH undergoes the profound remodelling in glaucoma, leading to the posterior deformation of the lamina cribrosa as well as the expansion of anterior and the posterior neural canal openings. In addition to cupping of the very optic nerve, glaucoma patients typically show sectorial loss of the nerve fiber layer, that can be visualized with a red free light.
The correlation that is present between the anatomic structures and the volumetric spectral domain OCT images of the very optic nerve head was made clear during a study done by scientists and researches, exactly when they performed the SD-OCT imaging of the very optic nerve head in some animals like monkeys and obtained thin histological sections of the same very tissues.
And then with side by side comparison, they were able to present and conclude that the reflectance patterns imaged by the SD-OCT corresponded precisely to the various retinal layers present.
What is Oct glaucoma?
Optical coherence topography (OCT) is a test which obtains a topographical map of the very optic nerve, using the non-invasive light waves to take the cross-section pictures of the retina. An OCT test is the test that measures the thickness of the nerve fiber layer, that is the portion of the optic nerve most vulnerable to the eye pressure elevation.
An OCT test is done at the patient’s initial exam and then done every 6 to 12 months after wards. Thinning of the very optic nerve indicates that its being damaged by elevated or increased intraocular pressure.
When the OCT test results show that the optic nerve has thinning in its layers , that is the symptom of glaucoma. In addition to being this helpful in glaucoma, OCT is very useful in diagnosing the other type of eye conditions like diabetic retinopathy and age related macular degeneration in the eye.
Once the glaucoma is diagnosed, there is a sensitive method for detection of progression which is essential because it’s appropriately intensifying treatment that can slow RGC loss and preserve the vision. The detection of glaucoma progression with the OCT technology still remains a challenge till now because when assessing the structural changes over time, it is very difficult to discriminate between the g structural damage and the measurement variability or with the age-related structural issue.
What are the pros and cons of OCT glaucoma ?
In today’s world optical coherence tomography that is OCT has become a standard tool for diagnosing and monitoring the glaucoma.
As with many day to day advanced technologies, there are many ways we can use OCT and a number of potential points to avoid it .
Down below I have discussed some of those issues which include the limitations that the Oct technology has, the pros and cons of OCT, event and trend-based progression analysis and some common mistakes to avoid also the ways to improve the accuracy of the interpretation of OCT data after the procedure.
- Till this date, OCT is most useful when a person is either a glaucoma suspect or has early-to-moderate glaucoma disease, it’s used as a tool for helping to detect damage and the progression or the conversion from glaucoma suspect or ocular hypertensive to the glaucoma. While it’s evident and known that there are many parallels between the OCT technology and the visual fields like for example, being able to use them for either the event-based analysis or the trend-based progression analysis, OCT no doubt is arguably a better method in early disease, because when a person is being tested for visual function with a visual field test, the plasticity and the overlap inherent present in the visual system tend to compensate for any early damage present. As a result, the very early damage may be picked up by an OCT scan in a better way rather than by a visual field test so OCT is best for early disease.
- On the other hand, if we see, late in the disease OCT is less useful than the visual field test because of an effect called the floor effect, that refers to the fact that when the nerve thickness reaches about 45 to 50 µm, it then bottoms out and doesn’t decrease any further than this even though the damage caused by the disease may continue to worsen day by day
Outline
Glaucoma is a disease which leads to blindness over time, there are many factors that worsen or lead to glaucoma some of them mentioned above like age race and eyesight etc. Oct glaucoma is a medical procedure done to diagnosis the glaucoma even sometimes to treat it or see the progression it’s most useful in the start of the disease.