Target Pressure:

If you have glaucoma, you are well aware of the emphasis on keeping your eye pressure low.  Often eye drops are added or changed if the pressures don’t go down enough. For all our patients, we establish a TARGET PRESSURE. These target pressures are based upon many randomized clinical trials on glaucoma that were conducted by the National Eye Institute. The studies tested glaucoma patients at different phases of their disease. Each study is known by an acronym, such as AIGS, EMGTS, and OHTS. 

After we complete our assessment, we used these studies to decide what your target pressure should be. This is called EVIDENCE based medicine. Our approach to customize your glaucoma therapy according to the results of these studies, is one of the reasons Dr. Stone is one of the busiest glaucoma doctors in Chicago (see Synopsis of Studies).

The general rule of thumb is that the greater the degree of optic nerve and visual field loss at initial diagnosis, the more aggressive treatment needs to be to stop further loss. In terms of eye drop therapy, more aggressive might mean taking 4 drops a day rather than 1 drop a day. Yet at the some point we try and design your therapy to make it as easy as possible for you to follow your treatment plan.