Spectral sensitivity and color discrimination changes in glaucoma and glaucoma-suspect patients.

Color vision changes may occur early in the course of glaucoma and may precede visual field loss. Glaucoma suspects, having raised intraocular pressure and no diagnostic optic nerve head or visual field changes, may also have color vision loss. Unfortunately, the instruments used in the studies that have demonstrated these color vision changes were not feasible for routine clinical use; likewise, the studies did not carefully control for the effects of small pupil size and age or did not point to the underlying mechanisms responsible. We studied 19 glaucoma patients, 19 glaucoma suspects, and age-matched controls for each group by means of the Farnsworth D-15 panel test, a desaturated version of the D-15 test, and by measures of spectral increment threshold. Minor modifications of the Farnsworth D-15 panel test produce highly significant differentiation of glaucoma and glaucoma-suspect patients from age-matched normal groups. Further, spectral increment thresholds, with a two-degree spectral target flashed at either 1 or 25 Hz on a bright white background, show that both achromatic and chromatic sensitivity are significantly reduced when compared with their age-matched normals. Pupil size does not seem to be a significant factor. These results suggest that the function of two different ganglion cell populations is affected in glaucoma and that glaucoma may produce functional loss in the central foveal area earlier in the disease process than previously believed.