Closed-Angle Glaucoma Significance of Sectoral Variations in Angle Depth

THE authors of the published work on the subject of closed-angle (congestive) glaucoma are agreed that, although unstable vascular or nervous systems may exist in the patients and play a part of undetermined importance in the disease, the vast majority of affected eyes show an inherited shallow anterior chamber (T6rnquist, 1953), and a forward ballooning of the iris produced by resistance to the flow of aqueous between lens and iris. This resistance is due to the close contact between these two structures imposed on them by the forward position of the anterior surface of the lens. As the years pass and the lens increases in size, so the ballooned iris is pushed forwards and its periphery gradually approaches the trabeculae; an " attack of glaucoma " may occur as a result of pupillary dilatation, a change in position of the iris root, a change in the curvature or position of the lens, or any factor which alters the pressure on the two surfaces of the iris so that it is pushed, or pulled, *