LETTER
Yoga can be dangerous—glaucomatous visual field defect worsening due to postural yoga
University Eye Clinic, Geneva, Switzerland
Correspondence to:
Dimiter Robert Bertschinger, University Eye Clinic, 22 rue Alcide Jentzer, 1211 Geneva 14, Switzerland; dimiter.bertschinger@hcuge.ch
Accepted 11 January 2007
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
The relationship between the head-down body position and increased IOP is well known.1–6 We present a 46-year old woman who presented with a worsening of glaucomatous visual field defects one year after starting to perform regularly a particular postural headstand yoga exercise, reversible after cessation of the exercise.
In 10 non-yoga-practising volunteers intraocular pressure (IOP) was measured by Tono-Pen in sitting and immediately after assuming a headstand position. A more than twofold increase of the IOP was measured in the headstand position. Therefore postural (head-down) yoga exercises are clearly not recommended for patients suffering from glaucoma.
A 46-year-old Caucasian woman followed at our clinic for a bilateral juvenile open-angle glaucoma presented on a routine examination a significant worsening of her visual field defects on both eyes (fig 1). Twenty years previously a bilateral trabeculectomy had been performed and since then intraocular pressures had always been stable without treatment
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