Glaucoma
About half of Australia's cases of glaucoma are undiagnosed, says Geoff Pollard, national executive officer at Glaucoma Australia – yet 40% of adult Australians still don't have their eyes checked with any regularity.
"People are generally not going in to eye health providers to get checked, and then when they are in there, it's a complex disease to diagnose," Mr Pollard told the AJP.
"We believe that some people may or may not get the full gamut of checks once they're in there: traditionally, people have had an eye pressure check, rather than looking at the optic nerve.
"So our message is to have a simple optic nerve check as part of a comprehensive test."
Australians as a rule don't understand glaucoma, he says – particularly younger Australians.
"Traditionally it's been thought of as an older person's disease, but one in 200 40-year-olds have glaucoma," Mr Pollard says. "That doubles every decade of life, to one in 10 at age 80.
"The greatest risk is having high pressure [in the eye] – that's a 12 times greater risk than the average population. Next is having a direct relative with glaucoma, which gives you an up to 10-times greater risk.
"Anyone who has a relative with glaucoma should be recommended to have their eyes checked at least 10 years before that relative had glaucoma – so if they were diagnosed at 60, you'd start at 50."
Mr Pollard says pharmacy is a key focus for Glaucoma Australia, which has been working with the School of Pharmacy at the University of Sydney and communicating with the industry about pharmacists' potential role in managing the disease.
"If people are being treated, talk to them about their possible family history and suggest they ask for their relatives to get checked," he says.
"There's also an issue in that as with a lot of asymptomatic diseases, people stop taking their medication. That's made even worse with glaucoma because eye drops are fiddly to take compared to taking a tablet.
"Depression is quite a problem for people with low vision. They lose their independence and may feel the world's closed in on them, particularly if it's the reason they're no longer driving.
"And glaucoma affects mostly your peripheral vision - so the incidence of falls rises rapidly. That's a serious concern for people with osteoporosis and other people in the older age group."
Encouraging people to discuss their family history of glaucoma will be a focus for this year's Glaucoma Week (9-15 Mar), he says.
More information: www.glaucoma.org.au
Reproduced from AJP on Friday 28/2/14
