An Update on Glaucoma

Cheryl, thank you for joining me today.

Thank you for the invitation.

Well, it seems like a lot of my patients are on treatment for glaucoma.

So how common is this?

You know, likely if you're listening to this podcast, you know someone with glaucoma.

So, you know, over 4 million people in the U.S. are affected with glaucoma and about 95 million worldwide.

It's the second leading cause of blindness in the world.

And as you mentioned, the loss is irreversible.

Very, very common.

My practice is all adults, and I have to think that most of my patients with glaucoma are elderly.

Is glaucoma only a disease of the elderly?

That's a great question.

Predominantly, it is a disease of the elderly, but it's not exclusively a disease of the elderly.

There's certainly types of glaucoma, like congenital glaucoma.

or secondary glaucomas that are part of the syndrome, like Axenfeld-Rieger, Aniridia, Sturge-Weber, that affect younger people.

There's something called juvenile opening glaucoma, which affects individuals less than age 40.

And typically, that's caused by an abnormality of the myocilin gene.

Very high intraocular pressures are seen in those patients, and they tend not to respond well to medications and require surgical intervention.

So predominantly a disease of the elderly, but not exclusively.

So what are the risk factors for glaucoma? Who's more likely to get this?

Yeah, I mean, it's such an important question.

And I think this is where primary care physicians can play a major role.

You know, definitely it's a disease of the elderly for the most part.

But also if you have other ocular disease, you may be at a higher risk for glaucoma concurrently.

You know, certainly if you're on chronic steroids, that may increase your risk.