The epidemiology of glaucoma in East Asian people
The epidemiology of glaucoma in East Asia has been poorly understood until recently. Studies of Inuit populations in the arctic regions of Greenland, Canada and Alaska suggested that primary angle-closure glaucoma (PACG) was more prevalent than in European people, and was a leading cause of visual m...
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| Format: | Doctoral or Postdoctoral Thesis |
| Language: | English |
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UCL (University College London)
2002
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| Online Access: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10100279/1/The_epidemiology_of_glaucoma_i.pdf https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10100279/ |
| Summary: | The epidemiology of glaucoma in East Asia has been poorly understood until recently. Studies of Inuit populations in the arctic regions of Greenland, Canada and Alaska suggested that primary angle-closure glaucoma (PACG) was more prevalent than in European people, and was a leading cause of visual morbidity. Primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG) was reported to be scarce. A population- based study of glaucoma prevalence carried out in 1989 in Shun-yi County, Beijing, in the People's Republic of China gave similar findings. Ninety-eight percent of cases of primary glaucoma in adults were caused by angle-closure. Remarkably, there was only one case of POAG in subjects aged 40 years and older. In contrast, a nation-wide study of glaucoma prevalence in Japan found a high prevalence of open-angle glaucoma- 2.6% in men and 2.5% among women aged 40 years and older. The majority of cases were diagnosed as "normal tension glaucoma", with a screening intraocular pressure of < 22 mm Hg. The contradictory data from these two studies suggested that the clinical characteristics of glaucoma, and its importance as a cause of blindness in East Asian people, needed closer study. During 1991-92 Prof. Baasanhu carried out a population-based study of blindness in her native Mongolia. Her work suggested that rates of blindness from glaucoma and cataract were almost equal in adults (35% and 36% respectively)- a unique finding in a country with poorly developed cataract surgical services. Consequently, a population glaucoma survey in Mongolia was carried out in 1995 to ascertain the prevalence, clinical characteristics and visual morbidity of glaucoma in a Mongolian population. In 1996, I began working at the National Eye Centre in Singapore, and subsequently carried out a survey with similar objectives in a Chinese Singaporean population. The prevalence of glaucoma among people aged 40 years and older (when adjusted for age and sex differences between the populations) was 1.7% (95% Cl: 1.0 to 2.7) in Mongolia. In Singapore, the ... |
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