How long does Glaucoma treatment take?

How long does glaucoma treatment take?

Well, it depends on the treatment. So, if you’re talking about eye drops, it’s just instilling the eye drops on a daily basis. I think the important thing to remember is that once you’re on glaucoma treatment, you’re on it for the foreseeable future. In other words, usually for the rest of your life.

Giving glaucoma laser treatments is a relatively short-lived experience. It’s a day case procedure usually provided in the outpatient office. There are two types of glaucoma laser (selective laser trabeculoplasty and peripheral iridotomy) that we can perform as an outpatient procedure. Both treatments do not actually take that long to perform (e.g. on average, less than 10 minutes for each eye). Some eyes might take a bit longer to treat if, e.g. you have dark brown eyes since such eyes need a bit more preparation when planning a laser peripheral iridotomy. Also, your eyes are prepared for the operation with special eye drops, and afterwards we recommend we check your eyes before you go home, usually about an hour after the treatment.

Glaucoma operation

The cataract operation is a day case operation performed under a local anaesthetic. While the operation takes less than 15 minutes to perform, we need you to come to the hospital one to two hours before the operation to get you and your eye prepared. After we have finished the operation, we can discharge you home with your postoperative drops.

A trabeculectomy glaucoma operation takes about an hour to perform the surgery. We can also carry out this surgery as a day case procedure under local anaesthetic or general anaesthetic. Again we need you to come in one to two hours before the operation to get you and your eye prepared. After we have finished the operation, we like to check your eye before you go home with your postoperative drops. This can mean that you are in the hospital for several hours (e.g. half a day or more) before you go home.