How does my eye surgeon diagnose glaucoma?

Your eye surgeon will take your eye pressure, either in the lying down position (Schiotz tonometry) or in the sitting up position (applanation tonometry, non –contact or minimal contact tonometry). An isolated high reading, like in blood pressure readings need not signify glaucoma, though it will make your ophthalmologist look closely at your optic nerve (which is the only nerve of the brain visible to a trained doctor) through an instrument called an ophthalmoscope. If the nerve looks like it is getting compromised or pressed upon, he may record these finding by drawings or taking a photograph. He may also study the loss of peripheral vision by doing a computerized visual field examination. Glaucoma is also known to induce a loss of ability to distinguish between objects when the contrast between them is low. This fact is used to do contrast sensitivity tests to better diagnose early glaucoma. Open angled glaucoma is distinguished from narrow angled glaucoma by studying the angle of the eye (the area from which the fluid of the eye egresses) with a contact lens known as a gonioscope. Other high tech tests for difficult-to-diagnose cases include Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) and Nerve Fibre Analyzers.