normal tension glaucoma
- noun
- /ˈnɔrməl ˈtɛnʃən ɡləˈkoʊmə/
- Specialized
- Many patients with normal tension glaucoma experience progressive vision loss even when their eye pressure is within the normal range.
Examples
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Early detection of normal tension glaucoma is challenging because it does not involve elevated intraocular pressure.
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The doctor explained that normal tension glaucoma can still damage the optic nerve despite normal eye pressure.
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What is normal tension glaucoma?
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Many patients with normal tension glaucoma experience vision loss.
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Many patients with normal tension glaucoma experience vision loss despite having normal eye pressure.
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Doctors often miss normal tension glaucoma because the eye pressure readings appear typical during check-ups.
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Understanding normal tension glaucoma is crucial, as it can lead to optic nerve damage without elevated eye pressure.
Synonyms
An eye disease that damages the nerve at the back of the eye and can lead to blindness
Surface Forms
Morphology
The lexical parts are transparent—'normal' + 'tension' + 'glaucoma' suggests a type of glaucoma related to (normal) tension—so a learner could guess it's a glaucoma subtype involving 'normal tension'. However, the phrase relies on a medical, domain-specific sense of 'tension' (intraocular pressure) and the key paradox (optic nerve damage despite normal pressure) is not predictable from general meanings, making full understanding unlikely without medical knowledge.
Etymology
Normal tension glaucoma is a medical name that comes from doctors seeing the usual damage of glaucoma even though the eye's tension, or 'pressure', was normal. So, the name means 'glaucoma' that happens when eye pressure is normal.