The Clinical Use Of Diurnal Variatioin Of Intraocular Pressures: A General Overview And Study Results.

In the United States, between 900,000 and 2,000,000 people suffer from glaucoma. The disease glaucoma is usually thought to consist of a combination of optic disc changes, visual field defects and high intraocular pressure. These signs of glaucoma result in severe visual impairment or legal blindness in 15% of the affected people. This paper gives a brief overview of the signs of glaucoma, concentrating on the effects of high intraocular pressure. More specifically, the diurnal variation of intraocular pressure will be reported on. The second half of the paper details the results of a study that I did. The study was a modified diurnal
variation study in which the amount of variation in intraocular pressure in a day was compared to the peak pressure found that day.