A Hospital Based Prospective Study of Association between Intraocular Pressure and Myopia

Introduction: Myopia or near-sightedness is a refractive error in which rays of incident light from infinity are focused in front of retina with accommodation being at rest .It is a condition in which close objects are seen clearly, but objects farther away appear blurred. Myopia occurs if the eyeball is too long or the cornea, the clear front cover of the eye, has too much curvature. As a result, the light entering the eye is not focused correctly and distant objects look blurred. Materials and Methods: This is an observational study done in the department of Ophthalmology over a period of 24 months. 278 eyes of 200 patients were included for the study. Informed consent was taken from all the patients. All of them underwent a complete ocular examination including slit lamp examination, dilated fundus examination, retinoscopy and refraction. BCVA (Best corrected visual acuity) was assessed using Snellen's visual acuity chart. Intraocular pressure was measured by Goldmann applanation tonometer by the same investigator in all cases. Patients with astigmatism >1Dioptre (D) and hyperopia >+0.50 DS (Dioptre Sphere), Patients with family history of Glaucoma, history of trauma or surgery in the eye, patients on any topical medications and those with corneal dystrophy and myopic macular degeneration were excluded from the study. Results: A total of 200 patients (278 eyes) were included in the study. Mean age of the patients was 32 years (ranging from 11 years to 47 years). The study included 88 females and 112 males. There was no significant difference in gender distribution among the four diagnostic groups. The refractive error among the included eyes ranged from +0.50 DS to -9.00 DS. There was no statistically significant difference in Intraocular pressure between low myopia and emmetropia patients but the IOP in moderate (Group-2) and severe myopia(Group-3) was found to be higher compared to emmetropic patients .The results was statistically significant with a ‘P ‘value < 0.05.Conclusion: There is statistically significant correlation between intraocular pressure and myopia with intraocular pressure being higher in moderate and high myopic groups than in emmetropia or in low myopia, thereby increasing the risk of glaucoma in these patients