Common Eye Disorders and Diseases That Can Affect Your Vision

From mild irritations to severe eye problems, many common eye disorders and diseases can affect your vision. Identifying the symptoms of these problems early on can help prevent them from worsening or becoming life-threatening.

Refractive errors are the most common eye problems and can be corrected with glasses, contact lenses or surgery. These include nearsightedness, farsightedness, astigmatism, and presbyopia.

Glaucoma

Glaucoma is a group of eye diseases that cause irreversible vision loss because of damage to the optic nerve. This nerve carries information from the eyes to the brain.

It's usually caused by an increase in eye pressure that can damage the optic nerve. Treatments can prevent or slow down this damage.

The most common type of glaucoma is called open-angle glaucoma. It occurs when the drainage angle of the iris is blocked or partially obstructed, and eye pressure increases gradually.

About half of the people who have this form of glaucoma don't have any symptoms at first. As this form of the disease worsens, you may start to lose side (peripheral) vision, especially your ability to see things closest to you.

Cataracts

Cataracts develop when proteins in the lens clump together. This reduces the amount of light that reaches your retina, which can cause blurry vision. Next article

The lens is made up of water and protein. It adjusts your eyes’ focus to let you see clearly up close and far away.

But, as you get older, it’s normal for these proteins to break down and clump together. They form the characteristic cloudiness that is a cataract.

People with a history of certain health conditions, including diabetes or high blood pressure, are more likely to develop cataracts. Having regular eye exams helps your doctor catch cataracts before they become serious.

Retinitis Pigmentosa

Retinitis pigmentosa (RP) is an inherited eye disease that causes changes in the retina, the tissue at the back of the eye. These changes can cause vision loss.

RP affects two types of cells in the retina, called rods and cones. The rods collect dim light and help you see night or peripheral vision, while the cones gather more color and detail.

The condition is caused by mutations in the genes that control how these cells work together. Depending on which gene is causing the problem, treatment may slow or stop your vision loss.

Symptoms usually start in childhood. But the speed at which your eyesight changes varies from person to person.

Amblyopia

Amblyopia, also called “lazy eye,” is a common problem in children that may go undiagnosed until it’s too late. It happens when the brain relies more on one eye than the other, leading to blurry vision.

Most kids develop amblyopia in the better eye (the dominant eye) when it doesn’t line up with the other one (strabismus). This can happen in children who have high, unequal amounts of farsightedness (hyperopia) or nearsightedness (myopia), astigmatism, or unequally focused eyes (anisometropia). Browse around this site

Early, regular vision screenings are the best way to diagnose and treat amblyopia. Pediatricians test for it during the standard medical exam and refer the child to an ophthalmologist when the doctor or nurse notices that the child has trouble following an object with both eyes.

Colorblindness

Color blindness happens when the special cells in your eye, called cones, fail to respond properly to variations in wavelengths of light that allow you to see colors. The cones are found in the retina, a layer of light-sensitive tissue at the back of your eye.

People who are color blind have problems with one or more of the three cones in their eyes. The cones absorb different wavelengths of light and send information to the brain to distinguish colors.

An eye doctor can test for color vision deficiencies with a simple eye exam. Your doctor will show you a circle with hundreds of dots, each in a different color.