When will I see glaucoma treatment results?

When will I see the results of glaucoma treatments? That depends on what we’re talking about because there are short and long-term treatment goals and these goals may vary depending on the type of glaucoma, the severity of the disease at presentation and whether the patient has symptoms or not.

The short-term goal

The short-term goal of all glaucoma treatment is to reduce eye pressure, and in most cases, you will find out about the success or otherwise a couple of weeks to a couple of months after a treatment has been started.

If we have decided on medical eye drop (also called topical) treatment, then an initial reduction in eye pressure can be measured within 24 hours with some medications and certainly within a couple of weeks with most topical agents.

If we have recommended a laser trabeculoplasty treatment, we usually review your eyes a week after the treatment to measure the initial response. The full effect of this treatment takes a couple of months or so to measure regarding eye pressure reduction.

If we have recommended another laser treatment called peripheral iridotomy for angle-closure glaucoma, we usually reassess your eyes about a week after the treatment to measure the initial eye pressure response. We also check for any changes in the internal anatomy of the eye. We then recommend regular follow up varying from several months later to annually to determine whether these responses are maintained. 

If we have recommended a surgical treatment such as trabeculectomy, then we can measure the initial goal of eye pressure reduction straight after the operation. However, we are interested in checking whether this eye pressure reduction is maintained, therefore we usually closely monitor your eye after the operation, e.g. weekly for the first month after your operation, until we are satisfied that the initial result is sustained.

The long-term goal

Glaucoma is a disease that can ultimately induce irreversible visual impairment due to progressive optic nerve damage. Therefore, although the immediate short-term physical goal of all of the current, commonly employed glaucoma treatments is to reduce eye pressure, the long-term goal is to preserve your vision.

It is important to understand that treatment cannot make your vision better if there has been visual impairment. However, scientific research has proven that eye pressure reduction stops or slows down further disease deterioration in most patients.

We measure the results of our treatments against the rate of change before treatment started or was modified. We measure disease deterioration by checking for changes in the structure of the optic nerve and your peripheral vision via a visual field test.

We recommend we test your eyes regularly and it can take up to a minimum of two years to determine whether your condition is stabilising.

If you have developed glaucoma, but you do not have any symptoms, then a successful long-term treatment result is for you not develop any visual impairment symptoms. In other words, we want you to maintain sufficiently good quality vision to be able to continue your daily life, e.g. continuing to drive, walk and read without impairment.

Unfortunately, a few of our patients do present with symptoms or develop symptoms if their disease deteriorates, so the goal of increasing or modifying treatment in such cases would be to slow down or limit the development of additional visual impairment. It can take up to a minimum of two years to determine whether the treatments are working and to measure whether your condition and symptoms are stabilising.