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Treating high pressure in the eye is often used to prevent glaucoma - damage to the optic nerve that prevents vision. But is the pressure treatment really worth it? One of the commonest threats to our vision is glaucoma, damage to the nerve that takes visual signals from the eye to the brain for de-coding. No optic nerve - no seeing. People with glaucoma often have high pressure inside the eye and specialists actively treat this with drops or surgery. The hope is it will lessen the risk of optic nerve damage. But some people with high pressure won't get glaucoma and some people with normal pressure will. So is treatment really worth it? German researchers have analysed treatment trials and brought the results together. They found that if you have high eye pressure but no glaucoma yet, reducing the pressure halves the chances of loss of vision or nerve damage. Twelve people needed to be treated for five years for one to benefit. For people with glaucoma already, treatment reduces the chances of progression over five years by about 40 per cent and only seven people needed treatment for one to benefit. But if there's normal pressure in someone with glaucoma, it's still not certain that pressure reduction helps. Even so, if you're over 50 you should have your eye pressure checked. Get tested at an ealier age though if there's a family history of glaucoma or unexplained blindness.
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