I had glaucoma for 15 minutes!

Factual Questions
1

Ok, not really, though I did get a bit of a scare. Went in for my annual eye checkup yesterday including the puff test. Few minutes later, a different tech came into the room, asked if I had any family history of glaucoma, asked what medications I was on, and said “Well, your pressures have been elevated a little for the past couple of years, and this year one was really high. We like to see them between 10 and 20, but one of yours was 30”.

Oooookay. Well, the tech said that meds I’m on for asthma can contribute to intraocular pressure increases (something I must discuss with the optometrist) but they went ahead and did a pachymetry (later found out it was not “poke-imetry” as I first thought, but it was an ultrasound to measure the depth of the cornea) and toniometry where they press something directly against the eyeball to see how far it deforms under some specific amount of pressure.

The pachymetry said I had thick corneas and they could shave 4 points off that 30 reading right there, the toniometry said ‘19’. As in, the puff test was a false positive. Supposedly they’d still shave those 4 points (from the thick corneas) off the 19 and my “real” reading is now 15 which of course is just fine. So, no glaucoma.

All in all, to my surprise, those tests were less unpleasant than the actually puff test. It was actually sort of cool when the guy did the pachymetry reading, I could see my field of vision ripple when he did that one :slight_smile:

So, the questions since this is GQ and not MPSIMS:
[ul]
[li]Do they really take away the “thick cornea” points from the toniometry reading, so is my reading really 15? (or is it really 19, which is still fine)[/li][li]Do the puff machines yield a particularly large number of false positives? [/li][li]If a higher reading is due to medication (as mine might have been), is that considered “benign” (not true glaucoma, no treatment needed)? or would it require treatment for the glaucoma (or change in the causative meds as appropriate)?[/li][/ul]
I am going to discuss all this with my primary care doc and see about getting referred to an ophthalmologist just to double-check things; yesterday’s experience was at an optometrist. Maybe that’s overkill but I sort of like my eyes and would like to be absolutely sure they work as well as possible!

2

ISTR my ophalmologist telling me that puff tests are useless, but I’ll let any better-informed poster expound on that. My doc uses a pen-like device that touches the front of the eye directly.

That said, 30 is way high, they probably should have just redone the test before scaring you with glaucoma questions.

3

I concur. I must be tested every six months because I am at EXTREMELY high risk for glaucoma and my pressure is already elevated.

My optometrist does not use the puff test, as it lacks precision. I get a glowing ring on the end of the pe-like device that touches my eye directly as well. First of course they put in eye drops that anaesthetize the eye, so you feel nothing at all.

Cornea thickness does make a difference. I have thin corneas, so they tell me that my pressure is actually worse than the reading by about one or two points.

4

By all means see an ophthalmologist. He would be most qualified for follow up recommendations.
Good eyesight is to precious to take chances.

5

Frankly, I’d rather be famous.

6

:slight_smile: And if I were going to be famous, I’d rather it be for something other than crappy eyesight!!

Typo Knig just asked if my bout of glaucoma was at the bottom of the Marianas Trench, in the 1960s… :slight_smile:

Thanks for the replies, folks.

I’ll definitely phone the internist doc this week. It’s been mumble-mumble years since I’ve seen an ophthalmologist because I haven’t had any particular risk factors, but with this wakeup call (wrong number though it turned out to be, phew!) I think it’s not a bad idea to visit one for a baseline / second look.

7

Marijuana saves another life! :wink: