Chennai: India can easily be the world’s capital of glaucoma, a group of eye disorders that leads to irreversible blindness, with the disease affecting 12 million people, and remaining undiagnosed in over 90 per cent of the cases.
Increasing population of senior citizens, diabetics and people with refractive errors, the known potential risk factors, are set to make glaucoma a rapidly emerging non-communicable ocular disease in the country, which already houses 20 per cent of the world’s blind, says Dr R Kaladevi, regional medical director, Dr Agarwals Eye Hospital.
She adds that there are no known measures to prevent glaucoma. The only way to prevent blindness from glaucoma, which shows no symptoms in the early stage, is early diagnosis and treatment that could halt the progression of this silent thief of sight.
World Glaucoma Week 2021 is being observed from 7 to 13 March. Kaladevi says that nearly 40 million people in India, including 1.6 million children, are blind or visually impaired. Next to cataracts, and untreated refractive errors, glaucoma is the third leading cause of blindness in India. However, glaucoma is more complex and dangerous as the sight loss caused by it is progressive and, unlike cataract, is irreversible, she says.
Glaucoma is both under-diagnosed and under-treated. It occurs when the pressure inside the eye (intraocular pressure) increases.