Symptoms
With most forms of open angle glaucoma, often no symptoms are noticed by the patient when the disease is in its early stages. As the disease progresses to more advanced stages and increasing amounts of vision are lost, a person may notice a vague difficulty in seeing things at the edge of their vision. Often, the central vision remains quite good, though, and a person may not realize that treatment is needed until only a small tunnel of vision remains. For this reason, regular eye exams are important for screening for glaucoma.
Conversely, many forms of angle closure glaucoma do have symptoms. Typically, a person may experience episodes of pain, which may range from minimal discomfort to extreme aching pain of the eye and head. With these painful episodes, the vision may become very blurred. For this reason, people with angle closure often seek medical help sooner and are diagnosed with the disease before earlier than those with open angle glaucoma. Occasionally, though, angle closure symptoms are very mild and almost unnoticeable to the patient.
