A few days ago (March 12), it was the world day of the glaucoma, a disease that is the second cause of blindness in the world, reason enough for ophthalmologists to try to make the population aware of the need to carry out check-ups for its early detection and, what better opportunity than World Glaucoma Day to raise awareness of this need. For this, conferences are usually organized or, as we did in Área Oftalmológica Avanzada, information about it is published.
In some cases, it goes further and an open day is organized, with reviews to reveal a possible glaucoma that has not yet manifested itself, a very laudable initiative but also very dangerous when it is not carried out correctly or other purposes are pursued .
When you make a campYear of detection of glaucoma must provide adequate technical and human resources so that the result of the review is accurate and above all valuable. The reason for this article is that as every year, scared people come to our center because in one of these reviews they diagnosed glaucoma, even a medical treatment was prescribed, even knowing that this type of drugs have many side effects that, its administration is necessary, it is preferable not to prescribe them.
This year has not been the exception and once again we have had frightened patients who, after a careful examination, have seen that the glaucoma detected was not such. Among these cases, one stands out that has led me to write these lines flagrantly, it is a patient who went to an important clinic in Barcelona, where his ophthalmology service had organized one of these campyears of glaucoma detection. It was a patient who found the Intraocular pressure high and they explained that it was glaucoma and that he should have tests and treatment as soon as possible.
The frightened patient went to our center, where she is regularly visited, and we had never found her high blood pressure. A new examination was performed and there were no signs of ocular hypertension or glaucoma. The first thing we did is clarify that even in the hypothetical case of having high blood pressure, it does not mean that she suffers from glaucoma, the first serious error in the information that was given to that person (bad start for a campglaucoma information and prevention campaign).
When the patient told us how the review had been, we understood what had happened. The review was carried out by a person who was not an ophthalmologist, she had done it with a tonometer of air, which we know has a very high error rate and for this reason it is necessary to supplement with other tests and, most seriously, the taking was carried out with the lenses on, even after the patient asked if it was necessary to remove them so take was correct, just as he had done on other occasions. The textual answer as he tells us was, "It is not necessary, I do not think that the contact lenses modify the pressure measurement". An accumulation of errors that is totally intolerable.
Faced with practices of this type, it is only necessary to denounce it and warn people to look very carefully at the center and the ophthalmologist they choose to trust with their eyes, their sight.
It is necessary for people to know that when hiring a mutual, they have the right to be informed about the center to which they are going, the doctors who will treat them and the technology they will use because despite the fact that the average level of doctors is high, they do not They are all the same, the experience and level of training make the difference, as well as the investment made to update the technologies of each specialty.
We are living in a moment of "crisis" that can lead to undesirable practices, such as organizing conferences of this type, the main purpose of which is to attract patients without further ado, doing a lot of damage to the centers that do organize in a serious way.ampinformative and early detection years which, fortunately, are the majority.
The culture of "low cost" in health issues can be very dangerous, we can go from adjusting prices without reducing quality, to using means that are below that minimum quality required for good practice. We must flee from "anything goes", especially when we risk our health. You have to be well informed to choose correctly. Prevention is better than cure.
