Focussing on Glaucoma
Centre for Eye Research Australia’s Prof Jonathan Crowston and Assoc Prof Julian Rait addressed supporters and glaucoma sufferers in Melbourne recently at an information session, ‘Focusing on Glaucoma.’
The forum, part of the Centre’s Community Outreach Program, aimed to communicate the significant priorities of the Glaucoma Research Unit, contemporary research developments and to introduce the new state-of-the-art glaucoma wet lab facilities.
Glaucoma – an eye disease that slowly damages the fine nerves connecting the eye to the brain causing painless blurred vision– can lead to blindness if left untreated. It is estimated about 210,000 Australians have glaucoma.
Prof Jonathan Crowston, Director of the Basic Science Division’s Glaucoma Research Unit, said one of the current difficulties monitoring glaucoma was that patients generally needed to have lost about 25 per cent of their optic nerve cells before visual field tests could effectively detect the disease.
He said that lowering eye pressure was the only treatment proven to be effective in treating glaucoma.
“This technique however does not always prevent the steady progression of the condition and specialists are as yet unable to restore optic nerve tissue once lost.”
“We are working to develop new technologies to monitor the progression of glaucoma, new treatments that make the optic nerve resistant to glaucoma damage, as well as treatments to restore or replace a damaged optic nerve,” he said.
Assoc Prof Julian Rait said there was a need for rapid glaucoma screening tests, especially for patients aged over 50 years, ‘because one of the known risk factors associated with the disease is increased age.’
Focussing on Glaucoma presentations can be downloaded here:
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