Study: Open-angle glaucoma patients at higher risk of having a stroke

Stroke. 2009;40(8):2685-2690.

Patients with open-angle glaucoma showed a significantly higher risk of suffering a stroke, according to a large cohort study.

To date, the literature has not linked open-angle glaucoma (OAG) to stroke risk, the study authors said.

"Although open-angle glaucoma is associated with some of the risk factors of stroke development, there is still no published study addressing whether OAG increases the risk of stroke development," they said. "We investigated the risk of stroke development after a diagnosis of OAG."

The retrospective study included a cohort of 4,032 patients diagnosed with OAG. Data were collected from the Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database, which comprises data from about 1 million subjects among the nation's population of 23 million.

A control group comprised 20,160 randomly selected subjects matched for age, gender, geography and medical comorbidities. Study participants were followed for 5 years.

Results showed stroke developing in 14.9% of patients with OAG and 9.5% of controls during the 5-year follow-up interval. Patients with OAG had significantly lower 5-year stroke-free survival rates than controls.

Adjusted data showed patients with OAG were 1.52 times more likely than controls to suffer a stroke, the authors said.