The prevalence of glaucoma in the melbourne visual impairment project☆
Section snippets
Methods
The Melbourne Visual Impairment Project (Melbourne VIP) is a population-based prevalence study of the distribution and determinants of eye disease in Melbourne, Australia. The methods have been described in detail previously.15 Melbourne is Australia’s second largest city, with a population in 1991 of 3.02 million.16 Other than those born in Australia (68%), Melbourne’s major cultural groups are from the United Kingdom (6%), Italy (3.1%), Greece (2.1%), Vietnam (1.5%), and New Zealand (1.2%).16
Residential group
A total of 3271 persons attended the Melbourne VIP, an 83% response rate. A comparison between participants and nonparticipants showed that they were similar in all aspects except that non-English—speaking persons were slightly less likely to attend.20
Of the 3271 persons, 6 did not have complete information on IOP, C/D ratios, visual fields, or glaucoma history and therefore were excluded. This left 3265 for analysis. Data were missing on visual fields for 23 persons, for IOP in 50 persons, and
Discussion
The overall prevalence of definite POAG cases in persons older than 40 years of age in the Melbourne VIP was 1.7% (95% CL = 1.21, 2.21). This rate is similar to other prevalence studies around the world (Table 6).
It has been noted that blacks have a higher rate of POAG than whites,3, 4 and it can be seen that the studies with the two highest overall rates of POAG8, 13 included large black populations. However, this is not the case in a study in South Africa that included many indigenous
Acknowledgements
The authors thank Carl Zeiss Pty Ltd. for their donation of the visual field analyzer, automatic refractor, and lens analyzer. The authors also thank Cara Jin, Sharon Lee, Marie Bissinella, Caroline De Paola, Juanita Kidd, Charles Guest, Sharon Bailey, Cathy Walker, Claire McKean, Dr. Julian Rait, Professor Paul Mitchell, Dr. Ivan Goldberg, Dr. Laurie Hirst, and Dr. Paul Healy.
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Supported by the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation, Melbourne, the Ansell Ophthalmology Foundation, Melbourne, the National Health & Medical Research Council, Canberra, the Ophthalmic Research Institute of Australia, Sydney, Dorothy Edols Estate, Melbourne, and Carl Zeiss Pty Ltd, Sydney, Australia.