Global cases of glaucoma set to rocket

The global toll of glaucoma sufferers will reach 60 million by 2010. This will rise to almost 80 million by 2020, according to research in yesterday's British Journal of Ophthalmology (February 16).

Glaucoma is the second leading cause of blindness in the world, and is estimated to be responsible for 12 per cent of global blindness.

Three out of four cases will be open-angle glaucoma, which progresses more slowly than angle-closure glaucoma.

People living in Asia will account for almost half of those with glaucoma and most of those with the open-angle form.

Around 8.5 million people will be blind in both eyes as a result by 2010, a figure which will rise to more than 11 million people by 2020.

The report points out that efforts to tackle the disease have been hampered by a lack of consensus on the definition of the disease and the absence of a simple and accurate screening test.

The disease also suffers from an image problem, writes Dr Rupert Bourne a glaucoma specialist at Hinchingbrooke Hospital in Cambridgeshire and senior lecturer at the International Centre for Eye Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

'The fact that it is irreversible, difficult to detect, and difficult to treat means that it is often viewed as less of an urgent issue, particularly in developing nations where other more remediable diseases are more prevalent,' he said.

The authors reviewed all the data on glaucoma derived from studies based on populations. These figures were then used to calculate rates of the disease by age, sex, and ethnicity, in combination with United Nations projections for world population.

Based on these calculations, the authors estimate that 60.5 million people will have glaucoma by 2010, almost six out of 10 of whom will be women. By 2020, just under 80 million people will be affected.