Screening for glaucoma: age and sex of referrals and confirmed cases in England and Wales.

This paper is based on a prospective survey covering 275,600 sight tests by optometrists in England and Wales. It analyses the age and sex distribution of 1402 referrals for suspected glaucoma and 456 confirmed cases of the disease. The proportion of sight tests which led to a confirmed case increased with age, for both sexes, to a maximum at approximately 70 years, and then tended to decline. Cases of glaucoma in people aged 36-51 years accounted for about a tenth of the total, which is more than is generally recognized. Wider adoption of routine tonometry for middle aged people would help to ensure that these cases are detected at an early stage. Confirmed cases of glaucoma in which raised intraocular pressure had not been given as a reason for referral, i.e. probable low tension glaucomas, increased from 5% of patients < 51 years old to 13% of patients > 75 years old. Glaucoma was found to be much more common in men.