What Causes High Eye Pressure and How to Reduce It
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When people hear the word "glaucoma," many of them connect the eye disease with elevated heart pressures ( also known as intraocular force per unit area or IOP). Yet, the human relationship between glaucoma and eye pressure is complicated and has changed over time.
What is Considered High Eye Pressure?
In many forms of glaucoma, the eye force per unit area is high. What is considered "as well high"? Patients ask me this all the time, and I tell them it depends.
Commencement, we know that statistically speaking, having heart pressures over 21 mmHg (millimeters of mercury) is not very mutual in a more often than not healthy population. We also know that eye pressure level tends to increase equally we get older since the drainage system does not function equally well.
Second, we know that an optic nerve that is good for you can withstand a higher eye pressure than an optic nervus that is unhealthy. For instance, patients who have optic nerves with signs of more avant-garde disease likely demand lower middle pressures to prevent worsening of glaucoma.
Third, the eye pressure level that is "too high" for your optic nervus is sometimes adamant over time. Permit's say you begin treatment with an eye drop to lower middle pressure level, and it is successful in lowering your eye pressure by xx percent. However, your glaucoma continues to progress slowly. In that example, despite the initial heart force per unit area lowering, your ophthalmologist may determine that this new lower eye pressure level is withal "too high" and your optics demand to have even lower eye pressures.
Finally, it is important to realize that most patients with the nearly common form of glaucoma, primary open-bending glaucoma, have elevated eye pressures but do not feel hurting. Glaucoma is often called the "silent thief of sight" because patients do non accept symptoms until late in the affliction when they observe primal vision loss.
Glaucoma with "Normal" Eye Pressure
Another grade of glaucoma is called normal-tension glaucoma. If someone has normal-tension or normal-pressure glaucoma, their eye pressure level has never been recorded above 21 mmHg, yet they still have optic nerve impairment. Does this mean that their middle pressure hasnever been greater than 21 mmHg? That is difficult to say since a single eye pressure level measurement at any given time on any given day in the ophthalmologist'south office is a tiny "snapshot" of what the eye pressure truly is.
Patients who have normal-tension glaucoma are thought to have more susceptible optic nerves, such that even at normal eye pressures the optic nerve slowly degenerates. Moreover, even though the eye pressure level is "normal," the treatment is the same: lowering the eye force per unit area through medications, laser, or surgery. Lowering center pressure in normal tension glaucoma patients was found to slow glaucoma progression in well-designed randomized clinical trials including the Collaborative Normal Tension Glaucoma Written report (CNTGS). The CNTGS was the starting time study of its kind to testify that a xxx percent decrease in eye pressure reduced disease progression in patients with normal-tension glaucoma.
Aiming for the Target
One term you may hear your ophthalmologist discuss is your "target eye pressure." This refers to a goal eye pressure your ophthalmologist believes volition terminate your glaucoma from worsening. There is no magic formula but it is based on the status of your optic nerve, the results of your visual field tests, and your ophthalmologist'south clinical judgment, among other factors. Information technology is a good goal to have, but it is not the only factor to consider. And, even though yous may accept a target eye pressure, information technology is important to recognize that a unmarried center pressure measurement in the function is non truly reflective of what your centre pressure is on boilerplate, day to solar day, calendar week to week, or month to month.
Finally, your target eye pressure level may alter over time depending on how stable your glaucoma is. For example, if you have been stable for a long time, your ophthalmologist may not exist as concerned past an eye pressure level measurement that is slightly to a higher place goal. Indeed, eye pressure can vary depending on the time of day, when yous instilled your last dose of centre drops (if yous are on medication), your stress level, and other factors. On the other mitt, if you continue to demonstrate worsening glaucoma despite existence at your target centre pressure level, your ophthalmologist may decide to revise the target pressure to an even lower goal.
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- Glaucoma Toolkit (Information to Help You lot Sympathise and Manage Glaucoma)
- Expert Information on Glaucoma (Articles)
- National Glaucoma Research Study (Newsletters)
- What is Normal Eye Force per unit area? (Q & A)
- Master Open-Bending Glaucoma (Article)
- How is Heart Pressure Measured? (Article)
- The Eye Examination for Glaucoma (Article)
- Normal-Tension Glaucoma (Article)
- Ocular Hypertension and Glaucoma (Commodity)
- Glaucoma and the Importance of the Heart's Drainage Organization (Article)
- What is a Glaucoma "Suspect"? (Commodity)
- Primary Open-Angle Glaucoma (Article)
About the author
Yvonne Ou, Medico
Academy of California, San Francisco, UCSF Medical Center
Yvonne Ou, Physician, is a board certified ophthalmologist who specializes in glaucoma, including medical, light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation and surgical therapies; cataract evaluation and treatment including combined cataract and glaucoma surgery; glaucoma filtering and implant surgery; and newer procedures.
Source: https://www.brightfocus.org/glaucoma/article/glaucoma-and-eye-pressure
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