Postgraduate specialist glaucoma training and accreditation in optometry
16 December 2013
Volume 14, Issue 4
The role of optometry in disease management now goes well beyond the confines of case finding and referral.
Introduction
Approximately 10% of registrations for blindness in the UK are attributed to glaucoma and 2% of people older than 40 years have chronic open-angle glaucoma (COAG), a prevalence increasing to almost 10% in people older than 75 years of age (NICE 2009). The optometric profession plays a fundamental role in glaucoma detection, and has done so for several decades, initiating referral in excess of 90% of the glaucoma-related referrals directed to the hospital eye service (eg Bowling et al. 2005). Glaucoma referral refinement (GRR) schemes have improved the effectiveness of referral pathways and as such these ‘enhanced’ schemes have in themselves done much to enhance further the recognition of the role of the optometrist in glaucoma case finding (eg Harper 2011; Lawrenson 2013). The role of optometry in glaucoma has, however, seen a considerable expansion in the past two decades, and a role in disease management well beyond the confines of case finding and referral has become very well established (eg Spry 2008).
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