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Screening for glaucoma: age and sex of referrals and confirmed cases in England and Wales
Author(s) -
Tuck Maurice W.,
Crick Ronald P.
Publication year - 1992
Publication title -
ophthalmic and physiological optics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.147
H-Index - 66
eISSN - 1475-1313
pISSN - 0275-5408
DOI - 10.1111/j.1475-1313.1992.tb00307.x
Subject(s) - glaucoma , referral , medicine , intraocular pressure , optometry , ophthalmology , pediatrics , demography , family medicine , sociology
This paper is based on a prospective survey covering 275600 sight tests by optometrists in England and Wales. It analyses the age and sex distribution of 1402 referrals for suspected glaucoma and 456 confirmed cases of the disease. The proportion of sight tests which led to a confirmed case increased with age, for both sexes, to a maximum at ≈70 years, and then tended to decline. Cases of glaucoma in people aged 36–51 years accounted for about LI tenth of the total, which is more than is generally recognized. Wider adoption of routine tonometry for middle aged people would help to ensure that these cases are detected at an early stage. Continued cases of glaucoma in which raised intraocular pressure had not been given as a reason for referral, i.e. probable low tension glaucomas, increased from 5% of patients <51 years old to 13% of patients >75 years old. Glaucoma was found to be much more common in men.