Epidemiology of Glaucoma - Asian Perspectives
JJ O'Brien

Glaucoma is a major cause of irreversible blindness in the Asia-Pacific region. For example, East Asians may comprise almost half the estimated 5.1 million people in the world who have become blind through glaucoma.
The prevalence of primary angle closure glaucoma (PACG), the predominant form of glaucoma in Asian countries, is race-dependent, being lowest in Caucasian populations and highest in Inuit. It is believed that the incidents of PACG in East and Southeast Asia is somewhere between that of Europeans and Inuit, although few epidemiological studies are available from the Southeast Asian region.
Race has a major impact on the prevalence of PACG, and it is clear that Chinese ethnic region confers a markedly increased risk of acute disease. Interestingly, recent reports raised the possibility that environmental factors such as meteorological conditions may influence glaucoma onsets.
Further studies of glaucoma prevalence in the region are urgently needed in order to clarify the scale of the problem and identify the areas in most urgent needs of intervention programmes.