A new method to boost glaucoma medication adherence

Glaucoma medications work — if people take them.

But an evidence review found at least half of glaucoma patients do not take their prescribed medications, putting older adults at higher risk for causing a car accident or potentially losing their sight.

To help change the outlook, ophthalmology teams may soon borrow counseling techniques that have worked to motivate patients with diabetes. Instead of conversations about blood sugar medication, they will be about daily routines for administering glaucoma eye drops. But the focus will be the same: addressing each person’s unique reason for poor adherence.

“Just telling people to take their medications isn’t working. We’ve been doing that for years,” says IHPI member Paula Anne Newman-Casey, M.D., a specialist in glaucoma, cataract and anterior segment disease at the University of Michigan’s Kellogg Eye Center.