Community Eye Health Journal (Sep 2006)
What’s new in glaucoma treatment?
Abstract
Glaucoma treatment: the state of the evidenceInterventions for the treatment of different forms of glaucoma have been tried and tested for many years. The idea that lowering the pressure might be helpful was first proposed more than a hundred years ago. By the 1950s, it was established that raised intraocular pressure (IOP) was glaucoma, and vice versa. However, in the mid 1960s, Fred Hollows and Peter Graham demolished that simple concept by revealing that there were many people in the population with raised IOP but no glaucoma, and people with glaucoma without raised IOP.1 Nevertheless, IOP remains an important risk factor (and the only one we can modify) for a group of conditions characterised by a progressive atrophy of the optic nerve associated with typical structural and functional abnormalities.Only quite recently has robust evidence emerged regarding the effectiveness of treatment for open-angle glaucoma (OAG). There is still uncertainty about the best way to manage chronic angle closure. This discussion focuses only on the primary glaucomas in adults, open-angle and acute, and chronic angle closure.
