Impact of Visual Field Testing on Intraocular Pressure Change Trends in Healthy People and Glaucoma Patients

To compare the impact of visual field (VF) testing on intraocular pressure (IOP) change trends between healthy subjects and glaucoma patients.

We recruited healthy volunteer subjects who did not have previous ocular diseases and open-angle glaucoma patients who were medically controlled well. IOP in both eyes of each participant was measured by using a noncontact tonometer at five time points: before, immediately after (0 minute), and 10, 30, and 60 minutes after the standard automated perimetry. Repeated measures ANOVA was used to analyze the effect of VF testing on IOP change trends in healthy and glaucoma eyes.

Forty healthy subjects (80 eyes) and 31 open-angle glaucoma patients (62 eyes) were included for the study. The baseline IOP of healthy and glaucoma eyes was 16.11 ± 3.01 mmHg and 15.78 ± 3.57 mmHg, respectively. After the VF testing, the IOP in healthy eyes was decreased by 1.5% at 0 minute, 6.5% at 10 minutes (P < 0.001), 6.6% at 30 minutes (P < 0.001), and 7.0% at 1 hour (P < 0.001), indicating that this reduction was sustained for at least 1 hour. However, the IOP in glaucoma eyes was increased by 12.7% at 0 minute (P < 0.001) and, then, returned towards initial values 1 hour after the VF testing.

IOP change trends after VF field testing between healthy subjects and glaucoma patients were quite different. VF testing led to a mild and relatively sustained IOP decrease in healthy subjects, whereas IOP in open-angle glaucoma patients tended to significantly increase immediately after VF testing and, then, returned to pretest values after 1 hour. These findings indicate that the factors of VF testing should be considered in the clinical IOP measurements.