01/04/2026
January is Glaucoma Awareness Month, and this is a timely reminder for everyone—especially adults over 40, people with a family history of glaucoma, and individuals of African, Hispanic/Latino, or Asian ancestry—to schedule a comprehensive eye examination. A full exam should include measurement of eye pressure, careful evaluation of the optic nerve, and, when appropriate, tests such as gonioscopy and visual field assessment to detect early damage before symptoms appear. Because vision loss from glaucoma cannot be reversed, early detection and ongoing monitoring are essential to protect sight.
New tools are now available to help expand glaucoma risk assessment and screening capacity in clinics, community programs, and primary care settings. The free desktop Laroche Glaucoma Calculator (https://www.advancedeyecareny.com/laroche-glaucoma-risk-calculator) can be used by patients, ophthalmic technicians, and trained staff to flag individuals who may benefit from more detailed examination, including optic nerve and angle evaluation and additional glaucoma testing. The free Ocular Hypertension Treatment Study (OHTS) risk calculator (https://ohts.wustl.edu/app/uploads/2017/02/Points-System.pdf) and online tool (https://ohts.wustl.edu/risk/) estimate a person’s 5‑year risk of developing primary open-angle glaucoma and can support shared decision-making about when to start preventive treatment, often using a general threshold of more than 10% 5‑year risk while always considering individual clinical factors and judgment.
Initial glaucoma and ocular hypertension treatments commonly include medicated eye drops and/or laser trabeculoplasty, which have been shown to safely lower eye pressure and reduce the risk of disease progression for many patients. For people with cataracts and mild to moderate glaucoma, combining cataract surgery with minimally invasive glaucoma surgery (MIGS) is increasingly used to reduce eye pressure, decrease the number of medications, and improve visual function, and cataract surgery alone can also modestly lower eye pressure in some patients. In more advanced cases, established glaucoma operations such as trabeculectomy and glaucoma drainage devices remain essential options to achieve very low target pressures needed to preserve remaining vision.
This month offers an important opportunity for everyone—eye care professionals, primary care teams, patient advocates, and community leaders—to raise awareness, encourage regular eye examinations, and promote the use of evidence-based tools and treatments that help prevent avoidable blindness from glaucoma worldwide. Please share this message, adapt it to your local context, and use your own platforms, media outlets, professional networks, and community organizations so that the call to protect vision from glaucoma reaches as many people as possible.
Risk Calculator Based on Results from the Ocular Hypertension Treatment Study (OHTS) and the European Glaucoma Prevention Study (EGPS), we present a method for estimating the 5-year risk that an individual with ocular hypertension will develop Primary Open Angle Glaucoma (POAG). The method may be u....
