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Keeping an eye on your vision
Published: Monday 28th February 2011

Bill Todd (57) is pleased he’s worn glasses for most of his life, because it meant he was having regular eye examinations. If he hadn’t - the early signs of glaucoma would not have been picked up. 
Glaucoma is a disease which mainly affects people over 50, in which the optic nerve is damaged, leading to progressive, irreversible loss of vision. It's often called the "silent thief of sight." Of the 500,000 people in England and Wales who have glaucoma, only about half will be aware they have it. It affects around 70 million people across the world and Glaucoma of some type is found in about 2 per cent of the population over the age of 40.

Close blood relatives of patients with Primary Open Angle Glaucoma – the most common form of the disease - have at least a four-fold increased risk compared with those without a family history of glaucoma. 

If you have glaucoma, you probably won't notice any symptoms until your sight has deteriorated considerably. This is because the first part of your sight to be affected is the outer or peripheral field of vision. Central vision, used to focus on an object (for example when you're reading), isn't usually affected until much later on in the disease.
As a result, most people won’t realise anything is wrong until central vision is affected, by which time it’s too late as damage caused by glaucoma cannot be reversed.
Bill who’s from Seghill in Northumberland, was born with astigmatism - a very common vision problem where the cornea is not spherical but is more oval shaped – so he was used to visiting his optician every year or two.  Over the years his astigmatism had remained stable, so it was just a question of regular eye examinations to ensure Bill’s eye health was good and that he was wearing the correct prescription in his glasses. 

But then one day six years ago, Bill’s optometrist, John Davidson from Querido & Davidson in Heaton, discovered something totally different and far more worrying.

Querido and Davidson are one of the few opticians in the North East to have their own high tech glaucoma diagnosis system – the GDx Nerve Fibre Analyser. It provides quick and accurate evaluation of the nerve fibre layer (the tissue directly affected by glaucoma) and detects very early stages of glaucoma, allowing earlier diagnosis and treatment of the disease than traditional tests.
Traditional glaucoma tests only centre around measuring eye pressure or measuring the effect that glaucoma has on your overall visual field, which means they didn’t pick up the very early signs of nerve damage prior to vision loss.
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By using the GDx to measure Bill’s nerve fibre layer, John Davidson discovered that despite no damage to his vision at all, Bill’s measurement was well above the normal reading, which suggested he was in the very early stages of glaucoma, which further tests confirmed.
 
John explained that because they had discovered glaucoma early, the best form of treatment would be for Bill to use simple eye drops formulated specifically for the disease. Bill was given a prescription for Xalatan eye drops. After three months, Bill would have to return to Querido & Davidson to see if the eye drops were working & if there was any further early damage to his optic nerves.

Six years on, Bill is still using the eye drops nightly and his glaucoma has been stopped in its tracks: "I don’t even think about the eye drops”, says Bill: "I just put them in automatically and still go for my regular eye examinations. I’m so grateful I was already having routine eye tests, because if I’d had perfect sight, the glaucoma might not have been picked up until I was starting to notice symptoms, by which time it would have been too late and my eyesight would have got progressively worse and worse without a cure.” 

John Davidson says: "As with most health problems, the key to management is early intervention and prevention. We are delighted to have been able to help so many glaucoma patients, such as Bill, get the best care as early as possible. Preventing loss of vision for these patients is extremely gratifying. This month we take delivery of a new instrument to help us analyse key anatomical features of the front of the eye to help us better understand the specific causes of eye pressure changes on an individual basis. The Oculus Pentacan instrument will add yet another dimension to our ever growing glaucoma detection work.”



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Newcastle Opticians

Is your current eyecare provider giving you the service that you expect? ...or is he or she just too rushed or disinterested? Then move on & join us at Querido & Davidson.

We are a national award winning eyecare practice (established in 1956) with a long heritage of providing exemplary service and exceptional products.

Eye Tests & Examinations

Our Optometrists carry out a huge array of checks during to your eye examination. These can include testing your eye pressure (to detect glaucoma - which, if undetected, could lead to blindness), checking sideways field of vision and the health of the back of your eye.

All these checks are quick and painless, and will provide us with important information that will help monitor any slight changes over time.

Contact Lenses

We fit a huge variety of contact lenses types to patients across the whole of the UK. We supply lenses to people of all ages, & all prescription types. Using corneal topography and slit lamp image capture we provide the highest standard of care to all our contact lenses wearing patients.

We specialise in iGo OVC, Ortho-K and Paragon CRT Orthokeratology work for all ages from 6 upwards. We are an accredited Chromagen contact lens practice. We supply varifocal contact lenses and contact lenses to correct astigmatism. We can also supply theatrical contact lenses for television productions.

In 2006 we were awarded the title of Contact lens practice of the year at the UK Optician awards.

Keratoconus Eye Care

We are a keratoconus friendly practice, and are experienced in the following keratoconus management methods:

Finding Querido & Davidison:

We are located at:
196 Chillingham Road
Heaton
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE6 5LN
0191 265 9898

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