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NTG called ‘cancer’ of glaucoma
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Normal tension glaucoma manifests in sometimes unclear presentations, and treatment options are limited, according to one glaucoma specialist.
“Normal tension glaucoma … really is the ‘cancer’ of glaucoma. It is the toughest patient to treat, as many of us know,” said Martin B. Wax, MD, of Washington University’s School of Medicine. Dr. Wax recommends that physicians be clinically vigilant and offer patients individualized treatments.
Even though pressures appear physiologic in normal tension glaucoma (NTG), the disease is often pressure-dependent, and IOP must be minimized as much as possible, Dr. Wax noted. Pressure-lowering treatment is still the standard of care, but regardless of treatment, glaucomatous damage may continue to progress.
There is ongoing debate over whether NTG can be distinguished from high pressure glaucoma on visual fields. Dr. Wax noted that while this might be accomplished, in the later stages of the disease, “it’s very hard.”
Dr. Wax outlined what he dubbed subsets of NTG: the atherosclerotic variant, the hypotensive variant and autoimmune glaucoma.
The full article appears in the Feb. 15 issue of Ocular Surgery News U.S. Edition.