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HYPERTENSION AND YOUR EYES. Hypertension or high blood pressure is a common condition that may affect your eyes.   Question: What is hypertension?   Answer: Hypertension is a disease that affects your blood vessels and thus it can affect the blood vessels of the eye in the same manner as it affects other blood vessels elsewhere in the body.   Question: Are there any eye symptoms of hypertension?   Answer: Usually not. The patient is usually unaware that the hypertension has damaged his eyes unless a physician looks inside the eye and sees the very specific changes that hypertension causes inside the eye.  A short spell of severe high blood pressure may cause loss of visual acuity. This loss of visual acuity is usually reversed when the high blood pressure is brought under control. Hypertension may also cause the blood vessels on the outside of the eye to burst, and this causes a severe red eye. No treatment is usually necessary for this condition (except for control of the hypertension) as it clears up spontaneously.   Question: What then are the effects on the eye?   Answer:    1: It causes narrowing of the vessels.   2: It can contribute to total occlusion of the vessels of the retina with a blood-clot, and so cause severe damage to the retina and subsequent loss of vision.   3: It can cause leakage of the fluid from the blood vessels due to the hypertensive damage to the blood-vessels and so cause hemorrhages and deposits in the retina.   Question: Why is it necessary to know about the effects of hypertension on the eye?   Answer: The eye is the only organ in the human body where the physician can look directly at blood vessels without an invasive procedure. By examining the eye the physician can get an idea of the severity of the disease, as well as the success of treatment.  The eye plays a pivotal role in the diagnosis and treatment of hypertension. If changes due to hypertension are noticed in the eye, it indicates that other organs affected by high blood pressure such as the brain, heart and kidneys, might be similarly affected.   It is very important that you always alert your doctor or ophthalmologist to the fact that you suffer from hypertension, as it may affect decisions concerning possible surgery.

  If you have any further questions regarding hypertension and your eyes, please consult your eye specialist.