Angle Closure

Sometimes, I tell my patients who are feeling totally fine that they may end up with a big problem. “You will be in the emergency room, likely with blurred vision, a red eye, and throwing up.” This may sound pretty scary, but these are often the symptoms of an attack of angle closure glaucoma. When patients come to other appointments, one of the things we do is screen them for narrow angles. Having narrow angles increases the chance of an attack of angle closure glaucoma. So where is this narrow angle in the eye? It can basically be thought of as the angle between the cornea (the very front of the eye) and the iris (the colored part of the eye). If that angle is too small, then we need to think about the possibility of angle closure.