Long-term open angle glaucoma cohort study
Reviewed by Nana Theodorou

This was a study to estimate the development of open angle glaucoma (OAG) in a screened and re-examined elderly group as compared to an unscreened group during the same time period. The participants comprised of 856 individuals born in 1915 and living in the municipality of Skellefteå in 1981. A randomly selected subgroup of the cohort (40%) was repeatedly screened every seventh year for 21 years with regular eye examination at the same hospital. Suspected OAG cases were followed until 2002 for the development of OAG. Medical records were collected and analysed for OAG to included visual fields, optic nerve head description and IOP measurement. The numbers of OAG cases were compared between the screened group and the unscreened group. The cohort consisted of 339 screened and 517 unscreened participants with a higher incidence of diagnosed OAG in women in the screened group. Before 1981, there were six cases of OAG in the screened group and nine cases in the unscreened group. During the follow-up period from 1981 to 2002, there were 33 new cases in the screened group and 31 new cases of OAG in the unscreened group. There was no significant difference between the two groups but only a tendency for higher proportion of diagnosis in the screened group possibly due to the small sample size.

Diagnosed open-angle glaucoma in screened versus unscreened subjects – a long-term age cohort study.
Astrom S, Stenlund H, Linden C.
ACTA OPHTHALMOLOGICA
2014;92:501-6.