Lots of people have trouble with their eyesight when they get older. You might even have a parent or a grandparent who is suffering from glaucoma—a degenerative eye disease that is the leading cause of blindness.

According to Prevent Blindness America, an estimated 4 million Americans have glaucoma. Glaucoma occurs when the pressure inside the eye rises due to impaired fluid drainage from inside the eye. If left untreated, the condition may damage the optic nerve, resulting in a loss of peripheral vision and, in some cases, total blindness.

The bad news is that vision loss cannot be restored. The good news is that the Newark Beth Israel Medical Center offers glaucoma patients an innovative treatment that will prevent further vision loss. The surgical therapy, known as Trabectome, is the first of its kind in the state of New Jersey. The minimally invasive procedure is now available at Clara Maass Medical Center, an affiliate of the Saint Barnabas Health Care System located in Belleville, NJ. The procedure uses a small probe that opens the eye’s drainage system once inserted through a tiny incision in the eye’s cornea. It removes a small portion of a specific tissue in the eye, so the drainage functions better.

“Trabectome surgery is a much safer and simpler than other available glaucoma surgical therapies and adds to the existing surgical armamentarium for the treatment of glaucoma,” said Dr. Paul Lama, the director of the Glaucoma Institute of Northern New Jersey. “It can lower pressure and reduce a patient’s reliance on glaucoma medications without subjecting the eye to the risks associated with conventional glaucoma surgery.” Treatments like Trabectome aim to reduce eye pressure to prevent further damage to the optic nerve.

While the treatment is said to be safer and simpler than other glaucoma surgical therapies, Trabectome is a last-ditch procedure. It is considered when medications or trabeculoplasty (a laser procedure) fail to reduce or control pressure to an adequate level. The benefits of Trabectome are that the surgery is an outpatient procedure, requires very little sedation and patients generally recover within a week.

However, not all patients with glaucoma are good candidates for this procedure. A comprehensive evaluation and staging of the glaucoma disease process will determine who is a good candidate for Trabectome surgery.

For more information about Trabectome, please call :
1-888-SBHS-123 (1-888-724-7123).