Glaucoma States. Both internationally and in the United States, glaucoma is the second-leading cause of blindness. Globally, cataracts are a more common cause. Glaucoma is also the leading cause of blindness in African Americans, who have higher rates of primary open-angle glaucoma. Bilateral vision loss can negatively affect mobility and interfere with driving. A meta-analysis published in 2009 found that people with primary open angle glaucoma do "not" have increased mortality rates, or increased risk of cardiovascular death. The association of elevated intraocular pressure (IOP) and the eye disease glaucoma was first described by Englishman Richard Bannister in 1622: "...that the
Normal tension glaucoma of cases that have been reported in medical literature in the 1980s and 1990s who had the typical signs of glaucomatous damage, like optic nerve head excavation and thinning of the retinal nerve fiber layer, while these patients had an IOP that would generally have been regarded as "normal". It is now widely estimated that a larger percentage of patients with primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG) are suffering from normal tension glaucoma: probably half of all POAG patients in Europe and the majority of POAG patients in East Asia. Among Americans of Japanese descent, for instance, the prevalence of NTG is