I have just been diagnosed with glaucoma in my right eye. I also have high blood pressure. Could this play a part in this disease?

Jackie

Glaucoma is a condition in which the pressure inside the eye is too high. The elevated eye pressure gradually damages the optic nerve, which initially causes loss of peripheral vision. However, if glaucoma is not properly treated, central vision will eventually be lost and the patient will be blind.

The difficulty with glaucoma is that, other than vision loss, there is usually no pain or other symptoms. So, without regular eye exams, a person with glaucoma may go undiagnosed for many years. Once glaucoma is diagnosed, it can be treated with a variety of medications. In the small percentage of cases in which drugs do not adequately control eye pressure, surgery can often help.

There are many known risk factors for glaucoma. One of the strongest is having close relatives who have already been diagnosed with glaucoma. Other significant risk factors include race (people of African American descent have an increased risk of developing glaucoma), advanced age, smoking, previous eye trauma and the use of corticosteroid medications.

To answer your question, two conditions often associated with glaucoma are high blood pressure and diabetes. However, it is controversial whether either of these conditions actually increase the risk for glaucoma. Both high blood pressure and diabetes occur more commonly with increasing age, so it is not surprising that people with glaucoma are likely to also have one of these relatively common conditions. We do know that the presence of high blood pressure or diabetes does not affect the severity of a person's glaucoma. In addition, controlling high blood pressure does not have any effect on a person's eye pressure or risk of visual loss from glaucoma. Given the current scientific evidence, most experts now think that high blood pressure does not play a role in glaucoma.