Treatment possibilities

Glaucoma treatment has three basic alternatives: eye drops, laser treatment and surgery.

Eye drops: the drug-induced treatment with eye drops is the most common therapy for glaucoma. There is a variety of highly efficient eye drops that can decrease the IOP through different active ingredients. Sometimes an amount of active ingredients has to be combined to assure a safe pressure adjustment. The eye drop therapy demands a lifelong discipline and therapy constancy from the patient.

Laser therapy: Argon Laser Trabeculoplasty (ALT) has been proven to be efficacious for the reduction of the IOP. The laser treatment can normally lower the eye pressure by 5-10 mm Hg. Unfortunately, the IOP-lowering effect is not always constant over a longer period of time.

Surgical treatment: there is a number of different operative techniques we apply to lower the intraocular pressure. The most important and most frequently used are the trabeculectomy for the chronic open angle glaucoma and the iridectomy for angle closure glaucoma. We will be glad to give you more information on the therapy options in a personal consultation.

Glaucoma treatment at first is carried out with the use of eye drops to lower the IOP. If such a drug-induced treatment is not sufficient to decrease the eye pressure, a laser therapy or a surgical treatment should be taken into consideration. Even with a successful surgical treatment it is not possible to undo already existent damages of the optic nerve (atrophy of the optic nerve fibers. Therefore it is vital to actively prevent it, i.e. before a damage of the optic nerve is clinically visible.