Awareness and Knowledge about glaucoma among the cases attending Ophthalmology outpatient department in a Tertiary care center

Abstract

Awareness and knowledge about glaucoma plays a major role is changing the people’s health seeking behavior for regular eye checkups which in turn leads to early detection and treatment of glaucoma and other ophthalmic disorders also and thus this study was planned. This cross sectional hospital based study was conducted in the outpatient department of Ophthalmology at Sri Muthukumaran Medical College Hospital and Research Institute, Chennai, from September 2019 to November 2019. A total of 220 patients were included in the study. Data analysis was done using SPSS version 18. Awareness about glaucoma was reported among 21.4% of participants and among them only 40.4% had knowledge that increased intraocular pressure (IOP) is the cause for glaucoma. Also 31.9%, 40.4%, 44.7%, 2.1%, 14.9% and 34% of participants reported that obesity, diabetes mellitus, hypertension, steroids, alcohol and smoking and family history of glaucoma were the risk factors of glaucoma. Degree holders and employed participants were found to be significantly associated with better awareness of glaucoma. Awareness about glaucoma in this study was poor and knowledge is still worse. This shows that we are in high time to health educate the people especially the target population about glaucoma, which causes preventable blindness.