Ahead of World Glaucoma Week March 8 to 14, the local Glaucoma Support Group is highlighting the connection between the eye disease and sickle cell anemia.
Pediatrician Dr Edda Hadeed of the Sickle Cell Association explained that the sticky, sickle shaped white blood cells that characterise sickle-cell anemia can block blood vessels of the optic nerve.
”Just like sickle cell can affect any organ in your body, it can affect the optic nerve. So, the bottom line is that people who have sickle cell are at risk for glaucoma,” she said.
“On a more philosophical scale there are numerous parallels there because both diseases are potentially debilitating and disabling. Both diseases, once diagnosed cannot be changed… and early detection makes a huge difference for both scenarios.”
Vice President of the Glaucoma Support Group Dr Jillia Bird noted that a small percentage of infants are born with glaucoma but the disease usually goes undetected.
“Glaucoma is not a single disease, it is a group of diseases and congenital glaucoma is one of those. So a small percentage of infants are born with glaucoma.”
Dr Bird said while approximately one in 10, 000 infants are born with the disease, she has seen several cases of congenital glaucoma in her practice over the past 25 years.
One of the principal difficulties with the disorder, she said, was the difficulty of screening babies. But she contends that the problem could be solved by routine observation on the Maternity Ward.
In congenital glaucoma, a defect in the structure of the eyeball causes infants’ eyes to swell due to both an increased pressure within the eye and the softness of a newborn’s eyeball.
This swelling results in the eye appearing larger than normal. The affected child’s cornea also appears cloudier than normal.
“It’s quite dramatically obvious, if you take time to look,” she said. “In the earlier stages you have to look carefully to observe it and a lot of parents mistake it for pretty blue eyes, but careful observation with a penlight can detect problems that need further investigation.”
While congenital glaucoma cannot be reversed, Bird said it is treatable. However, a child with the disease will have to have several surgeries over the course of their lifetime to manage the disease.
While World Glaucoma Day is officially observed on March 12, the medical community uses an entire week to raise awareness of the disease and promote early testing.
The Support Group says the eye drop medication to treat glaucoma is provided by Medical Benefits and no one should go blind from the disease.