onlincourse

Glaucoma: A Public Health Approach to Preventing Blindness

Develop a public health understanding of glaucoma, its lifelong management, and raising awareness for better quality eye care with this course from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.

Duration

4 weeks

Weekly study

4 hours

100% online

How it works

Unlimited subscription

Learn more

Accreditation

More info

Explore pathways to strengthen glaucoma eye care services

Glaucoma relates to a group of eye conditions characterised by optic nerve damage and visual field loss, resulting in irreversible blindness. It reduces physical, emotional, and social wellbeing as well as overall quality of life.

On this four-week course from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, you’ll learn all you need to know about glaucoma and the public health approach to service provision and reducing the risk of disease progression.

You’ll explore how early detection and treatment is crucial in helping to prevent blindness and how to raise awareness within ophthalmic services. You’ll also unpack the challenge of delivering accessible and affordable high-quality eye care in preventing disease progression.

Analyse and evaluate methods of diagnosis for glaucoma

Working with experts in glaucoma, you’ll learn from their experience of delivering glaucoma services to those affected across a wide range of settings internationally.

You’ll also learn how glaucoma is investigated, diagnosed and managed across different resource settings.

Explore the management options and challenges for glaucoma

There are a number of diagnostic and treatment challenges associated with a lifelong disease like glaucoma.

You’ll assess the diagnostic guidelines and methods of management for open and closed-angle glaucomas. You’ll also learn to recognise treatment challenges faced at patient and health systems levels.

Learn how to advocate for access to good eye care to improve quality of life

Glaucoma can remain undetected for many years, leading to late presentation and high risk of blindness.

You’ll examine the key components of a glaucoma eye care programme and advocate for the resources, training, and infrastructure requirements within different levels of health services.

Week 1
What is glaucoma and why is it important?
- Welcome to the course & Week 1
  A welcome to the course from the teaching team and an initial opportunity to introduce yourself. Activities look at how we understand glaucoma and its impact on individuals and eye health services
- What is glaucoma?
  Glaucoma is a general term used to describe a group of eye disorders that damage the optic nerve.
- The global burden of glaucoma
  Glaucoma is the second leading cause of blindness globally.
- Impact of glaucoma and public health approaches
  Glaucoma patients often present very late with irreversible vision loss which has far reaching impact on them, their families and the outcome of treatment.
Week 2
Investigating and monitoring glaucoma - the patient care pathway
- The importance of investigating glaucoma
  Glaucoma diagnosis is a complex process as it produces no signs until it affects the eye and causes a loss of vision partially or entirely.
- Key investigations for glaucoma
  Gonioscopy is essential to determine if the the patients has an open or closed iris-corneal angle.
- Decision making for glaucoma
  Decisions about the diagnosis are made based on findings from essential investigation of the eye and its function and this will guide the Ophthalmologist on the severity of the glaucoma and how often the patient needs to be seen.
- Webinar
  Glaucoma experts discuss their challenges and share their views on technologies and services that need to be implemented to address the growing burden of vision loss from glaucoma.
Week 3
Delivering a glaucoma eye care programme
- Glaucoma services: patient and provider perspectives
  Across all health services a relationship is established between the patients and the health provider. For glaucoma care this relationship is lifelong.
- Key components of a glaucoma service
  Service provision and referral pathway alignment is an important consideration for glaucoma management
- Programme approaches for service delivery and patient support
  Patient support and counselling has to be integral to the glaucoma programme and lifelong management for the patients.
Week 4
Management of glaucoma
- Primary open-angle glaucoma: Who to treat and how
  The aim of glaucoma care is to preserve and promote the quality of life of a person.
- Treatment options for open-angle glaucoma
  Treatment can be medical, surgical or lasers for glaucoma on their own or in combination to address the specific requirements for every patient.
- Recognising and treating angle-closure glaucoma
  Iridocorneal angle closure is the fundamental problem in primary angle-closure glaucoma, while elevated intraocular pressure (IOP) is a consequence of angle closure.
- Managing the consequences of glaucoma and related vision loss
  The negative impact of blind, painful eyes due to glaucoma on patients' quality of life cannot be underestimated
- Course summary
  Glaucoma management is lifelong. The public health approach is to develop a close link between the patient and the health system to prevent blindness.