Original articleLong-Term Trends in Glaucoma-Related Blindness in Olmsted County, Minnesota
Section snippets
Data Collection
This is a population-based study of all residents of Olmsted County, Minnesota, who were newly diagnosed with OAG between 1965 and 2000. As a result of a unique resource known as the Rochester Epidemiology Project (REP), Olmsted County is one of the few places in the world where longitudinal population-based studies are conducted. The REP13, 14, 15 is a surveillance and medical records linkage system established to study the occurrence and natural history of disease among the residents of
Results
A total of 563 new cases of OAG were diagnosed during the period from 1981 to 2000. There were 235 male and 328 female subjects, with a mean age of 65.2±15.3 years (mean ± standard deviation [SD]). The follow-up time extended to the end of 2009 and ranged from less than 1 month to 28.2 years with a mean follow-up time of 11.2±6.7 years. Table 1 summarizes the characteristics of incident cases from this period, as well as the previously collected study data set for the period 1965–1980.16, 17
Discussion
The REP tracks the entire population of Olmsted County over multiple decades and is particularly well suited for assessing longitudinal trends in OAG-related blindness rates. In contrast, prospective population-based eye studies are primarily designed to assess prevalence instead of incidence and are unable to assess long-term trends in a relatively rare condition such as OAG-related blindness. Even if serial ophthalmic examinations could be performed for the study populations, these studies
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Financial Disclosure(s): The author(s) have no proprietary or commercial interest in any materials discussed in this article.
Funding: Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research, a Research to Prevent Blindness Special Scholar Award (A.J.S.), an unrestricted departmental grant from Research to Prevent Blindness, and the Rochester Epidemiology Project (REP) (Grant Number R01 AG034676 from the National Institute on Aging). The sponsors or funding organizations had no role in the design or conduct of this research.