Evaluation of the water-drinking test.

DIFFERENT degrees of reliability of the water-drinking test for glaucoma have been reported in the literature. This may partly be explained by the fact that an insufficient number of tests have been carried out on healthy subjects, so that the physiological limits of the response to the test were not clear. Furthermore, the incidence of positive results in glaucomatous eyes with a normal initial tension has generally not been kept apart from those found in eyes with initially high tension. Both criticisms apply to an earlier paper in this Journal (Leydhecker, 1950), and the present re-consideration of the subject has been stimulated by the work of Agarwal and Sharma (1953), in which similar errors seem to be contained.