Glaucoma is a serious eye disease affecting one in eight people aged over 80 and around three per cent of the Australian population. Unfortunately, only half of people with glaucoma are diagnosed. Centre for Eye Research Australia’s research fellow Dr Jennifer Fan Gaskin, a glaucoma specialist and a practising ophthalmologist, says glaucoma is often diagnosed only after a significant vision loss.
Glaucoma is usually asymptomatic until the disease is very very advanced when they’re only left with a tunnel vision, and even then, often the brain fills in the gap, so even my patients with advanced glaucoma are often unaware that they’ve the lost majority of their vision.
