Systemic blood pressure in open-angle glaucoma, low tension glaucoma, and the normal eye.

The object of the present study was to investigate the hypothesis that a low systemic blood pressure might be associated with so-called low tension glaucoma: the rather un- expected result was an association between open-angle glaucoma and vascular hypertension. Theoretically, the pressure in the ophthalmic artery as shown by ophthalmodynamometry is likely to be a better index of blood pressure in arteries in the eyeball than the systemic blood pressure measured at the upper arm; however, in practice, we have the impression that the latter estimate has less observer error and so it has been chosen for this study. A good correlation seems to exist between ophthalmic artery and brachial artery pressure (Smith and Cogan, I959; Johnson and Drance, i 968a).