Host: Sometimes your baby is born and it seems they have a lot of tears in the eyes and it seem likes this cow eye look in it and you think oh! It could be glaucoma. Babies get glaucoma, is that possible?
Dr. Steven Rosenberg: Well, Glaucoma is like any raise in the pressure of the eyes. In general glaucoma that children can be born with is fairly rare. However, when you do get glaucoma it's a life threatening disease and it can possibly lead to blindness and actually untreatable almost definitely can lead to blindness. So this is an emergency condition that can happen when your child is born when the eyes are swollen and large and child is uncomfortable in tearing.
Basically the difference between the tear duct infection that we talked about before when the tear duct is blocked or the glaucoma is that when a tear duct is blocked the child is a little irritated but is mostly comfortable. When a child has glaucoma and they are born with it, they are very irritable, very uncomfortable and can't be consoled and also the eye looks swollen. Meaning the front cornea, the front part of the eye that's clear goes over the pupil which appears black and the colored part of the eye it's brown or blue or green.
That part that's over there will suddenly feel like it's swollen and it will seem that it's not clear. If you see that; that is emergency and actually be seen by a specialist or some ophthalmologist immediately.
Host: It can be treated?
Dr. Steven Rosenberg: The primary treatment for this is surgery. We do treat medications in order to try to lower the pressure until the patients gets to surgery, but when that's formed surgery is the indication. If the pressure gets controlled by surgery, yes, it maybe treated and it can be controlled. However, sometimes despite the best of treatment glaucoma in the chronic condition, that can cause the vision to slowly get worse over time and can lead to blindness.
Pathetic conditions, the child maybe have surgeries in order to keep the pressure under control over their lifetime.
Host: Is there a condition where the pupil's --
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