Glaucoma, active component, U.S. Armed Forces, 1998-2013

Glaucoma is an eye disease that involves progressive optic nerve damage and vision loss, leading to blindness if undetected or untreated. This report describes an analysis using the Defense Medical Surveillance System (DMSS) to identify all active component service members with an incident diagnosis of glaucoma during 1998-2013. The analysis identified 117,075 incident cases of glaucoma and an overall incidence rate of 5.3 per 1,000 person-years (p-yrs). The majority of cases (94.5%) were diagnosed at an early stage as borderline glaucoma. Over the study period, 5.9% of incident case service members were eventually diagnosed with open-angle glaucoma. There were 26 cases of absolute glaucoma, or total blindness. Rates of glaucoma were higher among black, non-Hispanic (8.8 per 1,000 p-yrs), Asian (6.6), and Hispanic (5.4) service members, compared with white, non-Hispanic (4.2) service members. Rates among female service members (6.0 per 1,000 p-yrs) were higher than those among male service members (5.1). Between 1998 and 2013, incidence rates of glaucoma declined by 48% among service members older than 44 years of age, while rates increased slightly among service members younger than 30 years of age.