Glaucoma : $b A symposium presented at a meeting of the Chicago Ophthalmological Society, November 17, 1913
Science
Glaucoma : $b A symposium presented at a meeting of the Chicago Ophthalmological Society, November 17, 1913
Glaucoma
The affinity of the tissues for water, or, as Fischer explains it, the
affinity of the tissue colloids for water, seems too little related to
the requirements of ocular function to furnish the needed regulation of
tension. The lymph spaces and blood-channels of the eye are large, as
compared with the mass of its tissue colloids. In these spaces and
channels must be sought a means for rapid response to the need for
regulation of intra-ocular tension. Fischer has shown, that when the
enucleated eyeball is placed in a weak solution of hydrochloric acid,
the swelling of the tissue colloids is sufficient in a few hours, to
burst the sclero-corneal coat. But this is an eye in which all
nutritional changes have ceased. He brings together many facts to
support the view that in the living tissues impaired circulation, and
especially diminished oxidation, are the chief causes of increased
affinity of the colloids for water. Such affinity increased by the
impairment of the intra-ocular circulation, may well constitute a factor
making for malignancy in glaucoma. But it can hardly explain the
original departure from a normal pressure balance.
We must assume that intra-ocular pressure is kept down to the normal
limit, by the prompt response of a regulative mechanism, which
diminishes the flow of fluid into the eye, or permits its more rapid
escape, whenever fluid tends to accumulate in the eye and increase its
tension.
Little has been done to show that increase of fluid entering into the
eye is the cause of glaucoma. A normal, or even a low arterial blood
pressure is sufficiently above the normal intra-ocular pressure to
furnish a source of increased fluid in the eye. Increased arterial
pressure has been found in a large proportion of cases of glaucoma; and
may be necessary to the production of the highest intra-ocular tension.
A sudden relaxation of the arterial walls, that would permit the
arterial blood pressure to make itself felt in the eye, might cause an
important rise of intra-ocular tension and may be a factor in the
etiology of acute attacks. It affords a possible mechanism through which
may be produced the recognized glaucomatous effects of certain nerve
disturbances. But such attacks are not commonly associated with
noticeable flushing of the head and face generally; and paralysis of the
cervical sympathetic is known to lower the intra-ocular tension.
Capillary blood pressure must lie between the arterial blood pressure
and the venous blood pressure. It must be closely associated with the
nutritional processes like secretion or inflammation; beyond this we
know little about it. The association of increased blood pressure with
glaucoma seems to be generally an indirect one through vascular lesions
and disturbances of nutrition.
_Obstructed Outflow_
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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