# Thyroid disease/cancer & glaucoma?



## joplin1975 (Jul 21, 2011)

Just curious is anyone knows of any link between thyroid disease (generally defined) and glaucoma? I do have a superficial understanding thyroid eye disease with regard to Graves (which I did not have) but I don't think that's what I'm curious about...

The short story is I'm mentally coming up with a list of little physical issues I've had and also ignored over the past ten years that now all kind of make sense as being related in some way shape or form to a pesky thyroid. Mostly muscle and joint pain, but there are a few other issues tossed in for good measure.

One that is still a mystery to me is occasional high intraocular pressure readings. I have a strong family history of glaucoma and began getting pressure readings regularly in my early 20s. Outside of being slightly near-sighted, I've not had any eye-related symptoms to complain of...I was just trying to stay on top of a potential problem given that my father has a number of issues related to glaucoma, including severe vision loss & retina dettachments.

Every couple of years, my pressure readings would be high. We would wait a few months, repeat, and the readings would be normal again. About five years ago, my doctor -- who was befuddled by the inconsistency of the readings -- did more thorough testing (measuring the thickness of the cornea, retinal scans, etc). Outside of having thicker than normal corneas, everything looked great (yay!). She noted that while thick corneas do throw off traditional intraocular pressure readings, you'd expect it to be consistenty higher than normal, rather than having the readings swing all over the place.

I was just thinking perhaps the explanation could some how be tied back to the thyroid. A google search seems to point to an answer of "unlikely"...and my husband tends to think its unlikely too (he was due to take his boards again this year and juuuuuuuuuuuuust so happened to spend a bit of time on endocrinology), but I thought I would ask, just to satisfy my own curiousity.

Thanks in advance.


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