Observations on color vision testing in ocular hypertension and glaucoma.

Forty-eight patients aged from 60 to 69 years (58 eyes) with ocular hypertension (OHT) or primary open angle glaucoma (POAG) and a control group of 16 persons (31 eyes) were studied with six color vision tests: Standard Pseudoisochromatic Plates Part 2, Farnsworth Panel D 15, Farnsworth-Munsell 100-hue (FM 100) test, Lanthony Desaturated Panel, Nagel (red-green) anomaloscope, and Besançon (blue) anomalometer. In the color vision tests, the newly diagnosed OHT eyes without treatment differed significantly from the control group in the blue anomalometer. The long-term OHT eyes with treatment had no significant difference from the normals in any of the tests. The newly diagnosed POAG eyes without treatment were significantly different from the normals in the FM 100 test as well as in the boxes I, II, III and IV of the test, in the Lanthony Desaturated Panel and in the blue anomalometer. The long-term POAG eyes with treatment only differed significantly from the normal eyes in the blue anomalometer. The box IV of the FM 100 test and blue anomalometer were observed to be the most useful of these six tests in finding the possible early beginning of the blue color vision defect in the group of newly diagnosed OHT.