A woman thought her blurred vision was caused by eye fatigue, but when she went for a checkup a year later, she was diagnosed with advanced glaucoma

Our correspondent Pei Nishang had always thought that watching videos on a daily basis caused eyestrain, until her vision deteriorated severely and she went to the hospital for a check-up, only to find that she was in the late stage of glaucoma.

Ms. Yang, 47, lives in Suizhou, Hubei. She likes playing mahjong and watching videos. A year ago, Ms. Yang found that she couldn't see the mahjong played by her opponent. She thought it was caused by eye fatigue from playing on the phone, so she didn't pay attention to it. It was not until the last month that Ms. Yang found that she couldn't even see the words on the phone in front of her. She realized the seriousness of the matter and went to the local hospital for a check-up. She found that her left eye had lost its vision and her intraocular pressure exceeded the normal range. So she went to the Aier Eye Hospital affiliated to Wuhan University accompanied by her family.

After examination, Ms. Yang's right eye was 0.4 with naked eye, intraocular pressure was 17 mmHg, optic nerve cup-disc ratio was about 0.5 (normal value is within 0.3), the chamber angle was nearly 1/2 closed, and there was a right eye arc visual field defect; the left eye had no light perception, intraocular pressure was 29 mmHg (normal is 11-21 mmHg), C/D was about 0.95, and the chamber angle was mostly closed. Zhang Ying, deputy chief physician of the glaucoma specialist, said that after detailed examination, the patient had primary angle-closure glaucoma in both eyes and senile cataracts in both eyes, and the condition of her left eye was already in the late stage of glaucoma, and she currently needed surgery to control her intraocular pressure.

At the end of June, Director Zhang Ying performed goniosynostosis on Ms. Yang's left eye, phacoemulsification and aspiration of the left eye cataract, cataract extraction with primary intraocular lens implantation on the left eye, iridotomy on the right eye, goniosynostosis on the right eye, and ciliary body photocoagulation on the left eye.

Yesterday, during a follow-up examination one week after the operation, Ms. Yang's naked eye vision in her right eye was 0.6, her left eye could see a manual motion 10 cm in front of her, and her intraocular pressure in both eyes was 16 mmHg, all within the normal range.

Director Zhang Ying said that cases like Ms. Yang are common in clinical practice, and the fundamental reason is that people know too little about glaucoma. "So we need to increase the popularization of glaucoma education, so that more people can understand glaucoma and pay attention to it, thereby reducing the occurrence of blindness."

Since the onset and development of glaucoma are very hidden, it is difficult to alert patients except for a few cases where the intraocular pressure increases acutely and causes obvious eye pain. Often, they come to the hospital in the middle or late stages. In addition, many people think that glaucoma is an old age disease and far away from them, so they do not care about them until the late stage when their vision is seriously reduced.

In this regard, Director Zhang Ying pointed out that people with high myopia of more than 600 degrees, hyperopia, family history of glaucoma, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and people over 40 years old are high-risk groups and should have an eye examination every year. Once eye swelling and vision loss occur, do not be careless and go to the ophthalmology department as soon as possible to avoid the regret of blindness caused by glaucoma.