[Juvenile glaucoma. Seven case reports].

BACKGROUND

Juvenile glaucoma is an uncommon form of chronic open angle glaucoma that appears between 3 and 35 years of age.

METHODS

We report in this study seven cases of juvenile glaucoma that occurred in patients melanoderma.

RESULTS

Three of them had unilateral blindness and in two others visual acuity was reduced to light perception in one eye. The intraocular pressure is above to 30 mmHg in 64.3% of the cases and a myopia was frequently associated.

CONCLUSION

The insidious development of this pathology and the difficulty of its diagnosis among children often result in severe clinical manifestations with high visual field defects and optic disc cuppings particularly in melanoderma patients. Recent studies have proved autosomal dominant transmission with variable penetrance for one kind of juvenile glaucoma and location of the defective gene on chromosome 1q.