Patient information

What is glaucoma?
It's where there's increased intraocular pressure.

What's intraocular pressure?
It's the fluid pressure inside the eye.

Wait... what fluid, and where inside the eye?
It's the aqueous humor, in the anterior chamber of the eye. So this is determined by the balance between how much is made, and how much is drained.

Patient information

There are different types of increased fluid pressure in the eye?
Yeah, closed and open. Closed is a sudden sort of thing, whereas open is a chronic sort of thing.

Patient information

What causes increased fluid pressure in the eye?
Someone in your family having it. Long use of corticosteroids. And eye injury.

Patient information

How do you test increased fluid pressure in the eye?
Tonometry, and gonioscopy.

What is tonometry and gonioscopy?
Tonometry is used ot measure the force to flatten an area of the cornea, and therefore measure fluid pressure in the eye, called intraocular pressure. Gonioscopy uses a microscope to view the angle formed between the cornea and iris, called the iridocorneal angle.