Glaucoma Suspect

As the name suggests, a glaucoma suspect is a patient suspected of having open-angle or angle-closure glaucoma because he or she shows signs of glaucoma or has one or more glaucoma risk factors yet there is no optic nerve damage or vision loss.
Glaucoma suspect describes a person with one or more risk factors that may lead to glaucoma, but this individual does not have definite glaucomatous optic nerve damage or visual field defect.

• Some risk factors include:
• Optic Nerve Appearance
• Narrow iridocorneal angles
• Central Corneal Thickness
• Over the age of 40
• Family history of glaucoma
• Abnormally high Intraocular eye pressure
• African, Scandinavian, Celtic, or Russian ancestry
• Diabetic
• Nearsighted
• Regular, long-term use of steriods/cortisone
• Previous eye injury

Long-term monitoring of glaucoma suspects is the only way to know for sure if glaucoma is present. To check if the optic nerve is damaged and to assess the extent of the damage, the doctor measures the diameter of the empty space created by the optic nerve fibre loss, what is known as optic disc cupping or optic nerve cupping. If the size of the "cup" grows from one visit to the next, then a diagnosis of glaucoma may be made. Having scans of your optic nerve with the HRTIII and having visual fields to monitor your eyes.