Estimated incidence of open-angle glaucoma in Olmsted County, Minnesota

To determine the incidence rates of open-angle glaucoma (OAG) in Olmsted Co unty, Minnesota. Design: Retrospective population-based estimate of incidence. Participants: From the medical histories of 60,666 residents of Olmsted Cou nty, Minnesota, who had ocular diagnoses during the study period, 114 subje cts with newly diagnosed OAG were identified. Methods: The database of the Rochester Epidemiology Project was used to ide ntify all Olmsted County residents with a coded diagnosis of OAG, glaucoma suspect, or ocular hypertension during the period 1965 to 1980. Subjects ne wly diagnosed with and treated for OAG who also had documented clinical evi dence of elevated intraocular pressure, optic nerve damage, and/or visual f ield loss consistent with glaucoma were included as incident cases. Populat ion data for Olmsted County were drawn from United States Census data. Crud e: incidence data were adjusted to the age and gender distribution of the 1 990 United States white population. Main Outcome Measures: Estimated incidence rates of OAG. Results: The overall age- and gender-adjusted annual incidence rate of OAG in a predominantly Caucasian population is conservatively estimated to be 1 4.5 per 100,000 population. The rates increased with age from 1.6 in the fo urth decade of life to 94.3 in the eighth decade. There was no significant difference in incidence by gender. The average annual rate of OAG in the la st 2 years of the study was 27.7 compared with 12.3 before 1979. This diffe rence is suggestive of the effect of the introduction of a new medical ther apy (timolol) for OAG during the last 2 years. Conclusions: The incidence rates of OAG increase markedly with advancing ag e, and screening efforts should be targeted at both men and women in the ol der age groups. The advent of new diagnostic and therapeutic modalities can have an effect on incidence rates. Ophthalmology 2001;108:882-886 (C) 2001 by the American Academy of Ophthalmology.