Who should care for your glaucoma?

Polls show that Americans have trouble telling the difference between the various kinds of eye care people. Let’s make it easy. There is an optician, who makes glasses and frames, but doesn’t look into the eye or treat eye disease. They essentially follow written instructions from eye doctors on the details of eye glass prescriptions, and they often perform important services in making glasses effective and comfortable. Optometrists attend four years of college, then four years of optometry school where they learn to diagnose and manage various eye conditions. They learn to examine and treat primary eye problems under a faculty of other optometrists and, in training centers that partner with eye surgeons, they may have opportunities to examine people receiving active surgical treatment. Some optometrists then take an extra year or more of specialized training in care of eye diseases, including glaucoma. The scope of optometry care now includes medical glaucoma treatment, but not eye surgery. Optometrists who demonstrate advanced knowledge earn the distinction of Fellow of the American Academy of Optometry (FAAO) and are listed in a directory available at aaopt.org.

An ophthalmologist is an M.D. or D.O. who went to four years of college, four years of medical school, one year of internship, then three years of specialized residency training in eye disease and eye surgery. After this training, an extensive written and oral set of examinations is given by the American Board of Ophthalmology, and only those who pass both are Board-certified ophthalmologists.

Some ophthalmologists do one to three more years of specialized fellowship training in an area of eye disease, such as glaucoma care. This involves working in an office that has a large proportion of patients with glaucoma and observing and participating in laser and surgery procedures. Those fellowship-trained glaucoma specialists who are known to their colleagues as having excellent training and experience can be voted into membership in the American Glaucoma Society (AGS). At the AGS website (https://www.americanglaucomasociety.net/), there is a button for “Find an AGS member” near you. Some glaucoma specialists are full-time faculty members of a university and teach fellows, residents, medical students and other eye doctors about glaucoma. Our Wilmer Institute Glaucoma Center of Excellence currently has many full-time faculty members who only care for glaucoma and its associated problems. University faculty glaucoma specialists also perform research both with patients and in laboratories.

The Wilmer Glaucoma Center of Excellence delivers care for those with glaucoma through a team-based approach involving each of these specialties.