Any refractive surgery procedure thins the cornea in order to correct your refractive error. A thinner cornea makes the measurement of the eye pressure less reliable because a thinner cornea produces a falsely low eye pressure. This means that if your eye pressure was truly high (more than 21), because of a thinner than normal cornea, your eye pressure reading may measure 17 (which deceptively looks normal). Hence, this makes it less reliable as a glaucoma indicator.
Personally, I have seen bad cases of glaucoma who have come to me after years of being undetected and untreated, until there is irreversible visual damage, because the prior attending doctor did not monitor eye pressure closely and did not realise glaucoma was creeping in.
In your case, if you have glaucoma, it might be in your best interest to avoid such refractive procedures which make monitoring of your glaucoma more difficult. Unless you have a responsible eye doctor who can advise you and monitor your glaucoma closely through other means such as retinal nerve fiber layer thickness and visual field analysis.
Hope that helps!
Dr Claudine Pang
