What is Glaucoma?

Your senses are how you interact with the world around you and many people take them for granted, simply using them as needed without really thinking about it. For your elderly adult, however, their senses might not be as strong and reliable as they once were, negatively impacting their daily life and their functioning.

January is Glaucoma Awareness Month. This is the ideal opportunity for you as a family caregiver to learn about this eye disease and how you can help reduce the risk of your parents developing it and how to care for them properly if it does develop during their later years.

What is Glaucoma?

Glaucoma is a medical term that refers to a cluster of diseases that impact and cause damage to the optic nerve.

Some things that you should know about glaucoma include:

• Approximately 1.9 percent of the population of the United States aged 40 and over are currently living with glaucoma
• This number accounts for 2.7 million aging adults throughout the nation

Glaucoma Symptoms

Glaucoma has no symptoms in its early stages, including no effect on vision.

Over time, glaucoma will gradually take away the peripheral vision and develop tunnel vision. As the disease progresses, the field of vision will become smaller until blindness occurs.

Glaucoma Treatment

As with many other medical conditions, early detection is vital to how your elderly parent manages their glaucoma.

Though medications and other treatments cannot restore any of the vision that might have been lost already to glaucoma, they can help to slow the progression and protect your elderly loved one’s vision for the future.

This makes it critical for you to keep up with your loved one’s eye health needs, which includes making sure that they get to the eye doctor at least once a year, or more often according to their recommendations. This allows the doctor to properly monitor your parent’s eye health and condition so that they can identify the earliest signs of glaucoma and get your aging parent on the proper course of medication and treatment that is right for them.

Contact Sonas for Home Health Care Services

Starting homecare can be one of the best decisions that you can make for your aging parent throughout the course of your caregiver journey with them. When your loved one is suffering a condition that negatively impacts their functioning such as glaucoma, the personalized services of an elderly home care services provider can be instrumental in helping them to adapt to the changes that have occurred due to the condition and provide support so that they can continue to live an engaged, fulfilling quality of life as they age in place.

This can include helping them to modify their home and daily life in ways that will help them to reduce safety risks that might arise due to their changes. When it comes to glaucoma, this homecare provider can help your senior parents avoid falls, prevent other dangers, and find ways to continue enjoying their favorite activities to support their quality of life in their later years.

If you or an aging loved one are considering home health care services in Florida, contact the caring staff at Sonas Home Health Care. Call today (888) 592-5855.

Sources
https://www.nei.nih.gov/learn-about-eye-health/eye-conditions-and-diseases/glaucoma
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/glaucoma/symptoms-causes/syc-20372839
http://www.visionproblemsus.org/glaucoma/glaucoma-map.html

Jillian Miller BSN, RN

Director of Nursing at Sonas Home Health Care

This blog was reviewed by Jillian Miller BSN, RN — Director of Nursing for Sonas Home Health Care’s Tampa Bay market — for clinical accuracy. Jillian Miller has been a nurse for 16 years — working primarily in pediatrics. She believes the best part of working with the pediatric population is when you see smiles from clients when you first enter the room. She loves seeing the difference you can make in families’ lives while providing the best care possible for them.