Myopia and Other Refractive Error and Their Relationships to Glaucoma Screening

Précis: A large disk, a large parapapillary delta zone and a long axial length may be used as screening criteria to detect glaucomatous optic neuropathy in highly myopic eyes. Purpose: To describe aspects for screening of glaucomatous optic neuropathy in dependence of refractive error, under special consideration of high myopia. Methods/Results: Studies on the anatomy of the myopic optic nerve head and results of investigations on the relationship between glaucomatous optic neuropathy and axial myopia were included. Conclusions: In the range from hyperopia to moderate myopia, refractive error is not a strong glaucoma risk factor and may not be included in glaucoma screening strategies. Care should be taken, that in moderate myopia, a shift of Bruch´s membrane opening usually into the temporal direction leads to parapapillary gamma zone and a corresponding shortening of the horizontal disk diameter. In these moderately myopic eyes, a secondarily small optic disk with a correspondingly small optic cup should not lead to an overlooking of intrapapillary glaucomatous changes. Prevalence of glaucomatous or glaucoma-like optic nerve atrophy (GOA) steeply increases with longer axial length in highly myopic eyes (cutoff approximately -8 diopters/axial length 26.5 mm), with prevalences higher than 50% in extremely high myopia. Besides longer axial length, morphological parameters associated with GOA in highly myopic eyes are a secondarily enlarged disk and large parapapillary delta zone. Both parameters, together with long axial length, may be used as screening criteria in high myopia for GOA. The latter is characterized by an abnormal neuroretinal rim shape, that is, vessel kinking close to the intrapapillary disk border. Factors associated with nonglaucomatous optic neuropathy are larger gamma zone and longer axial length, potentially due to an axial elongation-related retinal nerve fiber stretching.