Dr. Duncan Rogers:

At the moment, it is predominantly in optometric practices when people go in for appointments. I would counsel anyone to go in for their routine yearly or two-yearly test at the optometrist. The optometrist will have a look in at the back of the eye and do a field test. That is where we pick those things up. It is entirely asymptomatic - there are no symptoms at all. A person's vision might be fine to a certain point and then he or she might have no vision. If we look at the trajectory of somebody with glaucoma, he or she will not have symptoms until they get to about that certain point. Again, part of that reason the north-east region is bringing in optometric practice in a much more integrated manner is so we can pick up those patients. The work we have already done within the north-east region is to look at a unified referral pathway from the optometry practices into the hospital.