Data from almost 1 million glaucoma patients revealed that Black, Hispanic, and Native American individuals have worse vision outcomes and less disease monitoring. Discussing the study at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Ophthalmology, the researchers noted that the disparities persisted regardless of patients’ socioeconomic status.

“Black and Hispanic patients were approximately 30% more likely to develop poor vision or receive a low vision diagnosis, and Black patients were 45% more likely to require invasive glaucoma surgery," said lead researcher Elizabeth Ciociola, MD. "Additionally, we were not expecting to see such significantly lower eye care utilization rates among Native American patients, who are a historically understudied group.”

Dr. Ciociola and her colleagues used the AAO's IRIS (Intelligent Research in Sight) Registry to evaluate data on 996,297 glaucoma patients (62% White, 13% Black, 8% Hispanic, 2% Asian/Pacific Islander, and 0.3% Native American and Alaska Native).