BUFFALO, N.Y. — January is National Glaucoma Awareness Month.

Dr. Deepan Selvadurai of Buffalo Ophthalmology Southtowns says it’s a condition that affects more than 3 million people in the United States. He says the condition is caused by elevated pressure within a person's eye, which can cause damage to their vision.

According to Dr. Selvadurai, it’s a leading cause of irreversible blindness globally, but it's also very treatable.

"The goal of glaucoma treatment is to lower the eye pressure," said Selvadurai. "So typically we can do that with eye drops. So someone might be prescribed an eye drop that they might take once or twice a day depending on what's going on. There's laser treatments, which in places like Europe are actually the first line of treatment because it doesn't involve a person having to take drops. So from a compliance standpoint, the pressures tend to be more stable and so that can help the disease to not progress. And finally, we have surgical treatments that include things that can be done at the time of a person's cataract surgery, when they go in for routine cataract surgery. We can take steps, because we're already in the eye, to lower the eye pressure. And they're very safe, very effective. And sometimes they can really limit how bad the disease can get."

Find out more about the testing and treatment of glaucoma in Spectrum News 1 reporter Revathi Janaswamy's interview with Dr. Selvadurai.