Steroid Use Major Risk for Glaucoma

By The Times of India

March 2009

India

If you have been using eye drops on your own after a slight irritation, think again. 

Self-medication, usually of steroid-based eye drops, skin creams and inhalers can result in glaucoma, a cause of irreversible blindness which has no cure. Deliberating on the disease at PGI on World Glaucoma Day on Thursday, Prof SS Pandav and Sushmit Kaushik, advance eye centre, informed that the institute sees around 10 such patients daily primarily due to steroid usage. “In a month, we have seen 1,200 cases of glaucoma. Most of the young patients fall prey to the irrational prescription of eye drops and other steroids,” said Pandav. 

It is not easy to immediately categorize patients as blind. “To counsel and help such patients, the PGI has formed a support group of 15 likeminded people last year to spread awareness and help glaucoma patients fight blindness,” noted Kaushik. 

Elaborating on the cause of blindness, Pandav added, “Glaucoma causes progressive damage to the optic nerve, which is responsible for conveying image to the brain. A majority of the patients of glaucoma have no symptoms until the disease is quite advanced.” 

According to World Health Organization estimates, about 314 million people around the world have impaired vision, either due to eye diseases or need for glasses (uncorrected refractive errors). Of theses, 45 million people are blind. More than 82% of all blind people are 50 years of age or older and more than 90% of the world’s visually impaired people live in developing countries like India. Top five causes of blindness are cataract, refractive errors, glaucoma, age-related macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy. These account for 75% of all visual impairment. 

Currently, about 60 million people suffer from glaucoma. This number is expected to increase to 80 million by 2020 due to mainly increase in the ageing population. And India will be home to about one-sixth of these patients. Estimated projections indicate that 4.5 million people will be blind due to open-angle glaucoma and 3.9 million due to primary angle closure glaucoma by 2010.

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