Mayo Clinic Research Finds Risk of Glaucoma Blindness Drops by Half

Arthur Sit, M.D., a Mayo Clinic ophthalmologist, discusses a comparative long-range study by Mayo Clinic ophthalmology researchers that shows the probability of blindness from glaucoma 20 years after diagnosis has dropped by half in the last generation. The researchers examined the medical records of all residents of Olmsted County, Minnesota, age 40 or above, diagnosed with glaucoma between 1981 and 2000. They compared this with similar data from a previous study of patients diagnosed between 1965 and 1980, using the same resource, the repositories of the Rochester Epidemiology Project. The findings: While the incidence of glaucoma in the population has not changed, the probability of going blind in at least one eye due to glaucoma dropped by half, from 25.8 percent in the earlier study, to 13.5 percent in the later period. As well, the annual incidence of glaucoma-caused blindness in the population has dropped by more than half.