[The relevance of diabetes for patients with glaucoma]

Abstract

Although there are some hints for a correlation between diabetes and primary open angle glaucoma (POAG), it remains unclear in which way diabetes influences eye pressure (IOP) and glaucoma. Despite this, the main reason for neovascular glaucoma in diabetes is proven to be retinal ischaemia due to diabetic vessel damage. Primary open angle glaucoma is more frequent than neovascular glaucoma, but neovascular glaucoma is very aggressive and difficult to treat. The mainstay of the treatment is panretinal photo- or cryocoagulation. The next treatment options are cryodestructive procedures followed by filtering surgeries. In most cases a combination of treatments is necessary. In end-stage neovascular glaucoma sometimes enucleation is the only possible therapy when the IOP cannot be controlled or phthisis bulbi occurs.