WEDNESDAY, Nov. 15 (HealthDay News) -- Researchers say they've developed a model that predicts which patients would most benefit from treatments that ward off glaucoma.

The model uses five key risk factors in order to predict glaucoma risk. These factors are age; pressure within the eye; cup/disc ratio (a measure of the appearance of the optic nerve head); thickness of the cornea; and "pattern standard deviation" -- a measure derived from computerized field vision tests.

"When you enter these five factors -- and our model is based on the average of factors between the two eyes -- you can determine an individual's risk of developing glaucoma during the next five years," lead researcher Mae Gordon, professor in the department of ophthalmology at Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, said in a prepared statement.

"We have found that you can assess risk two ways," said Gordon. "We can enter the raw data, and our model will calculate the risk. We've also put together a simplified points system that assigns a certain number of points to the various risk factors. Adding up those points then provides doctors with an estimate of a patient's risk of progressing from elevated intraocular pressure to glaucoma."

Elevated eye pressure increases the risk for open-angle glaucoma, one of the most common forms of glaucoma and one of the leading causes of blindness in the world, affecting about 70 million people.

The findings were slated for presentation Tuesday at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Ophthalmology, in Las Vegas.

More information

The U.S. National Eye Institute has more about glaucoma.

-- Robert Preidt

SOURCE: Washington University School of Medicine, news release, Nov. 14, 2006

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