[The modern methods of monitoring the optic nerve disk and specificity of glaucomatous optic neuropathy in normal-pressure glaucoma].

The purpose of the case study was to determine an optimal method for monitoring the condition of the optic nerve disk (OND) and for precising the OND peculiarities in patients with normal pressure glaucoma (NPG). A comparison of the OND calculated parameters obtained for 16 patients (31 eyes), both by the "Rodenstock" scanning laser ophthalmoscope (SLO) and by HRT-II, revealed that the OND parameters calculation preformed by HRT-II was more informative, diversified and automated, which essentially cuts the procedure time. We examined, by HRT-II, a group of 31 patients (61 eyes), comprising patients with high pressure glaucoma (HPG), with suspected NPG and with moderate-pressure glaucoma (MPG) and a group of controls with moderate arterial hypertension. A comparison of OND areas' distributions of three groups (NPG group, MPG group and HPG group) showed that the majority of disks had an area ranging from 2.0 to 2.6 mm2 in the NPG, the same index ranged from 1.8 to 2.2 mm2 in the MPG group, and in the HPG group the disks were evenly distributed by area virtually in all ranks. The OND area was on the average less (2.13 mm2) in an impaired autoregulation versus the group without any symptoms of peripheral vasospasm (2.49 mm2). According to our findings, a higher OND size contributes to aggravating glaucoma at a lower intraocular pressure (IOP). It is noteworthy, that more pronounced changes are observed on the side with a bigger OND area in absence of any other risk factors, e.g. neuro-ophthalmic pathology or stenosis of the main cerebral arteries.