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How Do We Enhance Glaucoma Screening and Reduce Glaucoma Related Blindness?

Annamalai Odayappan, Srinivasan Kavitha, Sivagami Nachiappan, Rengaraj Venkatesh

Glaucoma is the leading cause of irreversible blindness and this burden has been projected to increase significantly in the years to come.Therefore, various steps need to be taken to tackle this problem and reduce the magnitude of blindness in the community. Screening the general population may not be feasible for glaucoma due to various reasons. This implies that we need to know who the high-risk population is so that we can do a targeted screening. The various risk factors described to be associated with delayed presentation includes older age, African-Caribbean individuals, female gender, socio-economic deprivation, poor literacy, unemployment, rural residence-greater distance from the hospital, patients referred by non-optometrists and presentation with symptoms.The prevalence of primary glaucomas is also greater among family members of known glaucoma patients. An appropriate action would be to screen people with such high-risk factors and thus diagnose glaucoma early. The other major concerns include maintaining patient’s compliance to treatment and identification of progression early. Detailed oral counselling and use of modern technology to create awareness have been suggested as aids in maintaining the follow-up. Here, we review the ways of how we could enhance glaucoma screening and maintain long-term follow up, patient care.