During an eye exam, one of the most common tests performed is an eye pressure test. This quick, simple test can provide critical information about your eye health and help detect serious eye conditions.
Maintaining a steady eye pressure is essential to eye health and clear vision. Keep reading to learn more about why eye doctors check your eye pressure!
How Do Eye Doctors Test Eye Pressure?
Measuring the pressure inside your eye (intraocular pressure) during an exam is known as tonometry. There are several types of tests eye doctors use to evaluate eye pressure, including:
- Applanation: Applanation tonometry, or Goldmann applanation, involves numbing the eye and using a device with a disk-shaped extension to measure the pressure required to flatten the cornea.
- Tono-Pen: The Tono-Pen is a handheld device that uses electronic applanation tonometry to measure the force needed to flatten a small area of the cornea.
- Air Puff: Also known as non-contact tonometry, an air puff test uses a sudden burst of air directed at the eye to measure tiny changes in the shape of the cornea as the air bounces off its surface.
Air puff tonometry is the type most often used at a routine eye exam in an optometry practice, while Goldmann applanation or a Tono-Pen is typically used to further examine patients whose initial results are unusual or concerning.
Why Does Testing Eye Pressure Matter?
The eye is filled with a clear fluid called aqueous humor, which provides nourishment and helps maintain its shape. New fluid is continually being produced while old fluid is drained through the eye’s specialized drainage meshwork.
If old aqueous humor is unable to drain properly, it can lead to a buildup of intraocular pressure. As pressure inside the eye increases, it can damage the delicate structures at the back of the eye, including the optic nerve.
Regularly testing eye pressure is crucial to eye health because the effects of high intraocular pressure can cause no symptoms initially. Often, symptoms of increased eye pressure, such as blurred vision, haloes, glare, and eye pain, only appear after serious damage to the eye has already occurred.
What Conditions Do Eye Doctors Use an Eye Pressure Test to Diagnose?
Elevated eye pressure can be a symptom of several serious eye conditions. These conditions include:
Glaucoma
Glaucoma is one of the most common causes of blindness in older adults. It has been called the “secret thief of sight” because it is often asymptomatic in its early stages.
The condition occurs when pressure builds up within the eye and damages the optic nerve, the structure that carries visual information from the eye to the brain. If left untreated, the damage caused by glaucoma can lead to permanent vision loss.
Detecting glaucoma is the primary objective of an eye pressure test. It helps eye doctors diagnose glaucoma early, sometimes years before noticeable vision changes occur.
Eye pressure tests can also tell an eye doctor how well treatments for glaucoma, such as eye drops, laser procedures, or stent implants, are working to control intraocular pressure. These tests ensure that patients receive the most effective glaucoma care.
Ocular Hypertension
Ocular hypertension is a condition in which the pressure within your eye is higher than normal, but with no signs of optic nerve damage or changes in vision. While the condition doesn’t always lead to glaucoma, it can significantly increase a person’s risk of developing the condition over time.
Although ocular hypertension can affect anyone, certain factors can increase your risk of developing the condition. These risk factors include age, a family history of glaucoma, ethnicity, diabetes, thin corneas, and long-term steroid use.
If ocular hypertension is not posing an immediate threat to the optic nerve, your eye doctor may recommend careful monitoring. They may also suggest preventive treatments to lower eye pressure and reduce your risk of developing glaucoma.
Uveitis
Uveitis is a form of eye inflammation that affects the uvea, the middle layer of tissue in the eye. In many cases, a specific cause can’t be identified, but common causes of uveitis include infection, eye injury, and autoimmune or inflammatory disease. The inflammation characteristic of uveitis can raise intraocular pressure to dangerous levels. It can block the eye’s drainage meshwork and harm critical structures within the eye.
If you have been diagnosed with uveitis, you will need frequent eye pressure tests as you recover to ensure your eyes are maintaining healthy levels of pressure. When left untreated, complications from uveitis can lead to retinal detachment, macular edema, glaucoma, or permanent vision loss.
Eye Injuries and Trauma
Eye injuries and trauma, even when they seem mild, can affect eye pressure. Both can damage the eye’s internal drainage system or cause bleeding inside the eye, which can lead to dangerous changes in intraocular pressure.
After an eye injury or trauma, eye doctors use eye pressure testing to assess internal damage and monitor healing. Detecting abnormal pressure early helps prevent long-term complications, such as traumatic onset glaucoma or preventable vision loss.
Can You Have Normal Eye Pressure and Still Develop Glaucoma?
Unfortunately, it is possible to develop glaucoma even if your eye pressure tests as normal. This is known as Low Tension Glaucoma. While measuring eye pressure is integral to diagnosing glaucoma, it is only one part of a comprehensive eye exam.
To get a complete picture of your eye health and vision quality, eye doctors perform a series of tests during an exam. Along with tonometry, they also conduct tests that assess visual acuity, peripheral vision strength, color and depth perception, eye muscle function, and internal eye health.
Advances in ophthalmological diagnostics, such as optical coherence tomography, have enabled eye doctors to detect serious eye conditions earlier and more accurately than ever before. It’s now possible to create detailed digital images of the structures within the eye, like the optic nerve, to evaluate any potential damage from elevated eye pressure.
Given the harmful effects of elevated intraocular pressure, eye pressure testing is essential to your eye health! Tonometry tests are painless, minimally invasive, and help prevent glaucoma and other conditions from compromising the health of your eyes and the clarity of your vision.
Concerned about your eye pressure? Schedule an appointment at Whitson Vision in Indianapolis, or Avon, IN, today.