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Updated: Jun 29, 2026

Assessing Early Stage Open-Angle Glaucoma in Patients by Isolated-Check Visual Evoked Potential
Published on: May 25, 2020
High prevalence of anxiety and depression in patients with primary open-angle glaucoma
Fumihiko Mabuchi1, Kimio Yoshimura, Kenji Kashiwagi
1Department of Ophthalmology, University of Yamanashi, Yamanashi, Japan. fmabuchi@yamanashi.ac.jp
Purpose:
To assess anxiety and depression in patients with primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG).
Design:
Multicenter prospective case-control study.
Participants:
Two hundred thirty patients with POAG and 230 sex-matched and age-matched reference subjects with no chronic ocular conditions except cataracts.
Intervention:
Anxiety and depression were evaluated using Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) questionnaire, which consists of 2 subscales with ranges of 0 to 21, representing anxiety (HADS-A) and depression (HADS-D).
Main Outcome Measure:
The prevalence of POAG patients with anxiety (a score of more than 10 on the HADS-A) or depression (a score of more than 10 on the HADS-D) was compared with that in the reference subjects. The prevalence of patients with depression was compared between the POAG patients with and without current beta-blocker eye drops.
Results:
The prevalence (13.0%) of POAG patients with anxiety was significantly higher (P=0.030) than in the reference subjects (7.0%). The prevalence (10.9%) of POAG patients with depression was significantly higher (P=0.026) than in the reference subjects (5.2%). Between the POAG patients with and without beta-blocker eye-drops, no significant difference (P=0.93) in the prevalence of depression was noted.
Conclusions:
POAG was related to anxiety and depression. No significant relationship between the use of beta-blocker eye-drops and depression was noted.
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