Ocular Hypertension

Much like the entire organ system of the body, the eye also has its own pressure that regulates it ensuring the inflow and outflow of liquid at a balanced rate, keeping the eye healthy and nourished at all times. Within the eye just behind the lens there's is a part known as the ciliary body which produces something we call aqueous humor.

This liquid produced has some particular functions to play in keeping part of the eye nourished whiles at the same time keeping a good tension within the eye. Now when one of these two scenarios occur then we have a little bit of a dicey situation which may need to be dealt with or tackled as soon as possible to prevent long or short term irreversible effect.

I say short or long term because in some scenarios an acute rise in pressure within the eye could cause so much damage within the shortest possible time which becomes irreversible and could possibly result in blindness.

1. When the drainage channel gets blocked;

This causes the fluid to build up within the eye pushing against the content of the eye and the optic nerve, eventually causing damage to the optic nerve, when it gets to the this stage then we have the condition glaucoma.

1. When too much production is going on;
   When there is too much production of the fluid happening as compared to the drainage the imbalance would result in a rise in ocular pressure.

In situations where this happening tend to be temporary, perhaps due to some changes that occurs within the eye's anatomy and physiology and later quickly corrected itself, then you doctor may diagnosed you of having ocular hypertension especially when there are not other indicators suggesting that glaucoma or glaucomatous damage may be present.

However it is worth mentioning that high intraocular pressure is a risk factor for Glaucoma and that even if one shows no signs of glaucoma but high IOP continue to persist, then it could break into Glaucoma.

What i need us to understand is that your doctor telling you your eye's pressure is elevated doesn't necessarily mean you have glaucoma, however it becomes a risk factor and it become pertinent that you keep to your appointments and heed your doctor's directives for your intraocular pressure to stabilize and come back to normal.

However, if you are a glaucoma patient, then you have to understand that it is no longer a temporary situation and that you would need to keep using your eyedrops every month to ensure that your intraocular pressure stays within range thus reducing the damage to your nerves. It was a pleasure serving you once again, thanks for your time and have blissful day.