Pressure Monitoring
Accurate intraocular pressure measurement is important for the diagnosis and management of glaucoma. All current pressure-measuring devices measure the pressure though the cornea. The cornea is the clear front window of the eye. If the cornea is abnormally thick or thin the intraocular pressure measurement will not be accurate. With a thick cornea the pressure reading will be higher than the true pressure. With a thin cornea the pressure will be lower than the true eye pressure. Over the last several years more attention has been focused on the importance of finding the corneal thickness to determine whether the pressure readings are accurate. The equipment that measures the corneal thickness is called a pachymeter. When the corneal thickness is measured a numbing drop is placed on the surface of the eye and a small probe is used to gently touch the front surface of the cornea while the ultrasound measurements are made. A correction factor to the eye pressure is then estimated based on the corneal thickness. Corneal thickness measurements should not change much from year to year and so do not need to be repeated frequently.
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