Coping with Glaucoma - Softcover

Edith Marks; Rita Montauredes

Softcover

ISBN 10: 089529804X ISBN 13: 9780895298041

Publisher: Avery, 1997

Synopsis

In Coping With Glaucoma, Edith Marks and Rita Montauredes offer a clear and easy-to-use guide to understanding and living with this sometimes unpredictable condition. They cover all aspects of the disease: the different types of glaucoma; what happens to the eye affected by glaucoma; and the connections between glaucoma and other conditions, such as cataracts, diabetes, and high blood pressure. Using nontechnical language, they explain the tests and procedures used to diagnose and monitor glaucoma - what they are, what they involve, and what they show - and provide important information on the medications used, including the best way to administer them for greatest effectiveness with fewest side effects. Other treatments, including laser therapy and surgical approaches, are discussed as well.
Coping With Glaucoma also contains a wealth of practical advice on other issues of concern, including how to choose a doctor; how to work with your doctor to ensure the best possible management of the condition; how to protect and care for your eyes every day; how to use nutrition, lifestyle changes, and alternative approaches to promote eye health; ways to reduce and cope with stress; and ways to work around the limitations that glaucoma imposes so that you can maximize your quality of life.

About this title

Reviews

Though much has been written about glaucoma, little of that has been geared to the lay reader. Marks and Montauredes, themselves afflicted with glaucoma, argue that it is a preventable disease. Here they provide a comprehensive description of the various glaucomas, their causes, the complex conditions leading to diagnosis, the range of treatments and outcomes, and risk factors. They discuss glaucoma that is medically induced as a consequence of surgery or the administration of steroids, offer an entire chapter on glaucoma in infants and children, and give extensive coverage to diagnostic processes and procedures as well as treatment modalities from medication to surgery and its potential complications. The authors also describe medical therapies as well as dietary approaches. Technical terms are defined in easily understood language. Highly recommended for both consumer health and professional collections.?Sue Hollander, UIC Lib. of the Health Sciences, Rockford, Ill.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

This is a story about the "silent thief of sight, an insidious eye disease that strikes without warning, without symptoms. Fifty million people worldwide have glaucoma, and as the population both grows in numbers and lives longer, the incidence of the disease is on the rise. And yet, for some reason, it has not become a part of our collective public health consciousness.

Not yet, that is. Now, Edith Marks, with Rita Montauredes, has brought out, at last, the first comprehensive treatment of the subject of glaucoma written for the general public. As fate would have it, her book arrives in, and in turn advances, a period of unprecedented public attention to this shy, sly disease. Public personalities, including President George Bush, have begun to speak out. Nationwide media attention was drawn to the sudden retirement from major league baseball of Minnesota Twins all star Kirby Puckett, who at the age of thirty-five discovered he had glaucoma.

In this book you will find more information about glaucoma than can be found in any other single source for the lay reader. Ms. Marks starts at the beginning and takes us through a thorough discussion of her subject, encompassing a vivid description of the miracle that is the eye, a survey of the many kinds of glaucoma, a review of the diagnostic tools doctors use, and the wide array of treatments available, from eye drops to lasers to surgery.

This book is more than informative it provides the energetic, positive outlook that is in fact quite important to the glaucoma patient's management of the disease. Perhaps this vital dimension arises not only from Mrs. Marks' ability as a writer but also from her and her colleague's personal interest in the subject. Ms. Marks has already lost a portion of her eyesight, and Ms. Montauredes has lost most of hers to this disease. You will find in this book not only the facts and figures of glaucoma, but the courageous example set by its author, as she responded to her sudden challenge with a determination to help others through research, writing, organizing, and conducting support groups, and, most of all, showing us how glaucoma patients can take charge and help to save their own eyesight.

Hopefully, coming as it does amid increasing public interest in the disease, this book will also help to inspire the a majority of our population who have never been to an eye doctor, or who haven't been in a long time, to have regular eye exams. A glaucoma test is simple, painless, and quick. It can save your sight. Edith Marks tells us all about in the pages of Coping With Glaucoma.

Edition details

• Publisher: Avery
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 089529804X
• ISBN 13: 9780895298041
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304