Hypotony
Hypotony
Hypotony
This material will help you understand hypotony and how to manage it.
What is hypotony?
If you have hypotony, this means that your eye pressure (intraocular pressure)
is too low. Hypotony can often cause decreased vision.
To take care of your eye at home, you will need to be very careful about your
eye pressure:
• You cannot bend over so that your head goes below your knees as that
causes the pressure to fluctuate in the eye and puts too much strain on it.
• You cannot lift anything that is more than 5 pounds because we do not
want you to strain. When you strain, the eye pressure fluctuates.
• If you are constipated, you should take a stool softener.
Kellogg Eye Center
Hypotony
1
Having very low eye pressure puts you at risk for bleeding inside the eye. If
your eye bleeds, you will have pain and decreased vision. If at any time you
develop worsening pain or vision, you need to call your eye doctor right away.
To decrease the chances of bleeding, you should not take any blood thinners
like motrin or aspirin. If you have mild pain, you can take Tylenol. If you are
taking a blood thinner like Coumadin®, you will need to talk to all of your
doctors about this.
For more information, scan these codes with your smartphone or visit
the websites listed.
http://www.aao.org/publications/eyenet/200910/pearls.cfm
http://www.glaucoma.org/treatment/hypotony.php
Patient Education by University of Michigan Health System is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Last Revised 11/2014