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Glaucoma Essay

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Imagine a world in which the only way to see was to reach your fingers out and feel. There would be no color to amaze you, no faces to distinguish between, and no facial expressions or body language to clue you in. Blindness is a serious thing that isn’t thought about very often. Glaucoma is a genetic disease that can cause blindness. It affects both old and young people worldwide. While it doesn’t decrease life expectancy, it is a disease that makes it hard or impossible to see that bright, colorful world. Glaucoma is a disease that causes damage to the eye. A risk factor, defined as something that increase the chance of getting glaucoma, is high eye pressure. However, it is possible to get glaucoma with normal or even low eye pressure. Another way to get glaucoma is by getting it genetically. 3,000,000+ Americans have glaucoma, so about 1 in every 10,000 babies in the United States are born with glaucoma. (glaucoma.org) Mutations can cause glaucoma, and one of the main genes associated with it is the gene ABCA1. In a lot of cases of glaucoma, this gene has either mutated or been given to the subjected person as a mutant gene. Because another risk factor is old age, specifically 60 years and older, the number 60.5 million from worldwide glaucoma …show more content…

In it, there are multiple kinds. The first, and more common, is open-angle glaucoma. This is the version that at first causes no symptoms, but then causes peripheral vision loss and sometimes total blindness. The second, less common version, is angle-closure glaucoma. Acute angle-closure glaucoma is when the flow of fluid between the lens of your eye and your cornea is blocked. It can induce severe pain, nausea, vomiting, blurred vision, and rainbow halos around lights. Blindness can result in under two days from this version. Another version of angle-closure is chronic. This is like acute, but it produces damage without symptoms

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