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Case report: General anesthesia can trigger acute angle-closure glaucoma
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FLORENCE, Italy — General anesthesia can be the triggering factor for acute angle closure glaucoma if patients are predisposed to the condition, according to a case report.
Drahomira Varcholova, MD, and Eva Ruzickova, MD, presented the case in a poster here at the European Glaucoma Society meeting.
According to the physicians, a 52-year-old white woman developed successive bilateral angle-closure glaucoma after undergoing recurrent surgery involving general anesthesia.
On first examination, the patient was blind in her right eye due to the glaucoma, and the left eye had a visual acuity of 0.08. Mean IOP was 48 mm Hg in the right eye and 27 mm Hg in the left eye. The patient was treated with laser iridotomy and a combination of timolol 0.5% and pilocarpine 2%, after which the IOP was reduced to a mean of 14 mm Hg in both eyes.
The authors noted that best corrected visual acuity improved to 0.4 in the left eye, but the right eye remained blind.