Burden of glaucoma on patients and society

Augusto Azuara Blanco MD, UK, told the ESCRS Glaucoma Day that investing to prevent sight loss is a good use of limited resources.

“We are going to see more and more people with glaucoma,” said Dr Azuara Blanco, “because of the ageing population and potentially also because we are going to detect people earlier as we become better at detecting the disease in the community.”

The direct medical costs of glaucoma are providing medical care in hospitals or ophthalmological practices. “Providing eye care is very expensive,” he said. “In the UK, we are spending over £500m per year to take care of glaucoma patients.”

Dr Azuara Blanco also said that the average expenditure over the lifetime of a person with glaucoma was about £3,000.

Vision loss was also very expensive for society, he said, and we are now spending much more in taking care of people with blindness. “Another important aspect is the loss of productivity,” said Dr Azuara Blanco.

“The take home message for all of us,” he said, “is that vision is so precious and we have good evidence to tell the decision makers that vision is very important for quality of life. Most interventions are going to make a difference in the clinical outcomes and are probably going to be cost-effective. Better treatments for glaucoma are going to make a real difference to patients and also to society as a whole,” said Dr Azuara Blanco.