Medicare now covers glaucoma detection exams

WASHINGTON — An annual dilated eye examination for people at high risk for glaucoma is now covered under Medicare, according to the National Institutes of Health.

Coverage is retroactive to Jan. 1, 2002. High risk Medicare beneficiaries are defined as those with diabetes, those with a family history of glaucoma, and African Americans aged 50 and older.

"Preventive benefits, such as this new glaucoma coverage, help keep people enrolled in Medicare healthy and improve their quality of life," said Tommy G. Thompson, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.

“Glaucoma, and the risk of vision loss, remains unrecognized for millions of Americans,” said Paul A. Sieving, MD, PhD, director of the National Eye Institute. "Studies have shown that the early detection and treatment of glaucoma, before it causes major vision loss, is the best way to control the disease.”

Results from the large-scale Rotterdam Study of glaucoma indicate that the lifetime risk of glaucoma in siblings and offspring of people with glaucoma is 9.2 times higher than in siblings and offspring of people without glaucoma, according to Anne Coleman, MD, PhD. Dr. Coleman will speak on the epidemiology of glaucoma today during Hawaii 2002, the Royal Hawaiian Eye Meeting. Hawaii 2002 is sponsored by Ocular Surgery News in conjunction with the New England Eye Center. Dr. Coleman said case-control studies have found 27.4% of patients with primary open-angle glaucoma were myopic compared with 6.9% of normal subjects.

The Glaucoma Research Foundation notes that glaucoma causes more than 20% of the world's blindness and is the second-leading cause of blindness in the United States after age-related macular degeneration.