Treatable Blindness

Truly speaking, one simply cannot imagine the pain or stress, anxiety, or depression of losing one of your senses. This condition will not only affect the physical functions but also mental and emotional stability. Definitely a frightening prospect for any person to assume! Regrettably, for some people, it is an ill-fated reality that they have to struggle with.
Roughly 2.2 billion individuals are suffering from mild to severe blindness, and more than half of the percentage is facing eyesight or vision issues due to preventable or curable causes, worldwide.

Visual impairment

In simple words, visual impairment is a medical condition where an individual loses his/her sight that will never be corrected with any treatment, whether he/she tries wearing lenses or glasses.
Undoubtedly, visual impairment has been developed as a worldwide problem, that is increasing at a faster pace. Coming to the statistics, almost 80% of visual impairments are avoidable and can be cured. The remaining 20% makes up for the visually challenged patients that have no way of curing.

Treatable blindness (Curable blindness)

By treatable blindness, we mean the stage of blindness featuring not so extensive or irreversible eye damage and with the support of prompt management, the vision can be restored. Treatable blindness comes with an exceptional chance of complete visual recovery.
In short, treatable blindness reflects a situation where vision is affected resulting in blindness caused by the treatable or curable underlying issue. The most common examples include farsightedness, nearsightedness, presbyopia, astigmatism, and refractive errors. For the treatment, all they need is the use of corrective lenses or surgery in severe cases.
The most common causes leading to treatable blindness are:

Glaucoma

The group of diseases that elevates the fluid pressure inside your eyes damaging the optic nerve is called glaucoma. Consequently, leading to the loss of eyesight or complete blindness, the deterioration of the eye function seems to progress rapidly. Glaucoma is known as the 2nd leading cause of sudden blindness. As far as the pain is concerned, it can get unbearable. The eye pain and discomfort can cause permanent vision damage. The good news is…it can be treated and vision can be restored but the treatment should always be chosen based on its type.

 Treatment 

Due to scientific advancements, certain effective treatments have been discovered to bring back the vision. But remember, the treatment tends to affect best only if the condition is diagnosed at a primary level. Routinely eye checkup is recommended for early diagnosis. The vision loss among children with glaucoma seems 90% reversible. For adults, a special medication is prescribed and in severe progressive glaucoma, the surgery typically the laser surgery is considered a way out.

Cataracts

Like glaucoma, cataracts can negatively impact your vision resulting in pain, distress, and blindness. It is a medical condition defined as a “clouding of the internal eye’s lens”. It can happen to both or in one eye ranging from severe to mild severity. How can I know that I have a cataract? Check for distinctive symptoms such as blurry vision, glare, double vision, and color changes

Treatment

The primary step to keep yourself safe from getting into untreatable kindness or any other serious eye problem is early detection means regular checkup! On the brighter side, Cataracts can be treated easily. The first approach is to wear eyeglasses or contact lenses but due to frequent vision deterioration, surgery is preferable. Do not worry, the surgery is considered highly safe and rapidly effective performed on an outpatient basis. What would happen if your both eyes need surgery? One eye will be operated at a time. Cataracts can be removed through phacoemulsification (phaco) that is done through a small eye incision or extracapsular cataract surgery that is done by making a larger eye incision.

Refractive errors

Don’t know why people are always so tensed about refractive errors, although they are the easiest to manage and treat. Almost all errors are treatable but if left untreated and not taken care of, they could lead to blindness, either temporary or even permanent. Commonly includes myopia or nearsightedness, hyperopia or farsightedness, and astigmatism.

Treatment 

Start with simple screening and move on to confirming a diagnosis followed by the medicine prescription, recommended use of eyeglasses/contact lenses, or eye surgery depending on the degree of severity. In the case of young aged patients or children, early diagnosis is very substantial since early analysis and treatment can truly help to restore the vision.
Are you diagnosed with Amblyopia? Being a treatable condition of blindness, the most common approach is aggressive vision rehabilitation lasting for weeks or months after the patching therapy of the amblyopic eye.

Age-related macular degeneration

Unfortunately, the disease has no cure BUT there is an arrangement of resourceful treatments for AMD from getting worse and stop it from leading to blindness. being the 3rd leading cause of blindness, the early should be made to take accurate precautionary measures so that the blindness can be prevented.

Treatments
Typically, the treatment regimen starts with a medication followed by laser therapy. Other essentialities that need your attention for faster cure are healthy nutrition and vitamin supplementation.

Commonly practiced medical treatments used for “Curable/Treatable blindness”

Contact lenses and glasses
It goes without saying but to treat the uncorrected refractive errors the best, safest, feasible, and most commonly used approaches are contact lenses or eyeglasses. The continued use of the glasses or lenses has been found beneficial in preventing further deterioration of eyes leading to blindness.

Refractive surgery or LASIK
Commonly named as LASIK, it is unquestionably the most effective and successful cure for farsightedness, nearsightedness, and astigmatism. It is performed to restore the vision. Do you what is the best part? It is not as expensive as it feels!

Corneal transplant
Adding to the long list of most common causes of treatable blindness is corneal damage but it can be cured with a range of treatments. The most preferable pick is an eye transplant, which is in reality only a corneal transplant for corneal blindness.
Are you wondering what happens during a corneal transplant? Simply, the damaged cornea is replaced with a new, functional, and healthy cornea. Surprisingly, the surgery shows an extremely high success rate despite it is a complex operation.

Use of Stem cells
The blindness can be cured if retinal epithelial cells have been damaged by using Embryonic stem cells to create all-new, perfectly healthy retinal pigmented epithelial cells. They will in return nurture the retinal visual cells helping them absorb light normally.
It is known to prevent vision loss through deriving fresh visual cells. This cell transplantation is considered an effective technique as it gets fully integrated with the retina, reinstating vision. Even if you have advanced and progressive retinal degeneration disorder, stems cells can cure your blindness.