At the end of the year, I finally had some free time to talk to my glaucoma patient friends about the various confusions of glaucoma patients and their solutions from the perspective of a doctor. In the current medical environment, as doctors, we are experiencing and experiencing firsthand all the torment and helplessness of glaucoma patients. Let’s first review the journey that glaucoma patients go through from diagnosis to treatment. With the exception of a certain percentage of acute attacks and a small number of glaucoma patients with secondary ocular or systemic disease, most glaucoma is discovered incidentally during a physical examination or visit to other eye diseases. As a result, these patients are usually surprised, then suspicious and fearful, and then look for multiple doctors in multiple hospitals. Usually, there are many patients in large hospitals, and the doctors are not able to explain the condition to the patients completely in a short time, and simply propose a treatment plan and start the treatment. Some patients who have undergone a successful surgical treatment think that everything is fine and stop going to the doctor, and when they see the doctor again in a few years, they find that irreversible visual impairment has occurred. Some patients feel scared and do not receive good guidance from their doctors (both in terms of treatment itself and psychologically), so they “throw themselves at random” and spend a lot of money on treatments that are not approved by scientific research, not only wasting money, but sometimes even backfiring, listening to rumors and compulsions in society and sometimes even in hospitals. Sometimes it is even counterproductive. Experiencing the helplessness and confusion of glaucoma patients, we glaucoma doctors are deeply worried and distressed. So, how should glaucoma patients be seen? In the current medical environment, there are indeed many difficulties that are not easy to solve, and as doctors we understand. First of all, patients need to understand that doctors and patients are actually comrades in a trench, our common enemy is the disease, and we overcome all kinds of difficulties together in order to overcome the disease together with patients. Doctors, by their very nature, are actually people who stand on the border between the unfamiliar world of disease and the known real world. We know more about that unfamiliar world of disease and are responsible for explaining things in that unfamiliar world to the sick person and proposing solutions. Doctors are not omnipotent and need to improve their understanding of that unfamiliar world through continuous study (learning from the experiences of doctors around the world) and research (summarizing their own clinical work). After understanding this, patients who have just experienced the fear of being diagnosed with glaucoma should slowly put their hearts down, and preferably choose a large hospital ophthalmologist who specializes in glaucoma, which is more convenient for them to visit. The reason is: there are many specialties in ophthalmology, and glaucoma is one of them, only the doctors in this specialty group can have more time to study and research glaucoma-related problems, and have more professional thinking; in addition, glaucoma is a lifelong disease, so it is good to see one doctor or one specialty group for the follow-up of the disease, which means the doctors can judge better and make more targeted treatment according to the long-term changes. In addition, it is good for doctors to follow up the disease with one doctor or one professional group, which means that doctors can make better judgment and provide more targeted treatment based on long-term changes, but if they see the disease with one hammer in the east and one stick in the west, each doctor will only see the situation at one point in time and it is difficult to grasp the disease comprehensively. From the point of view of the difficulty in accessing medical care, many large hospitals have now opened glaucoma specialty clinics for the convenience of glaucoma patients, solving the problem of difficult registration. Because of the special nature of glaucoma, more time is needed to explain the disease to patients, and many large hospitals have also opened “glaucoma patient clubs” in their glaucoma specialty groups, which allow patients to understand the characteristics of the disease and better cooperate with treatment. So, it seems that it is not difficult for glaucoma patients to see a doctor, right? Find a good doctor, work with him/her to fully understand the disease, choose the most appropriate treatment plan based on full communication, and follow up for a long time, as long as it remains stable, that’s our victory. Glaucoma is a worldwide problem. There is no perfect diagnosis that can confirm the diagnosis, so there are various diagnostic methods; there is no treatment method that is so perfect that it is absolutely effective and has no side effects, so there are various new treatment methods that keep emerging. Glaucoma patients are one of the most well-informed patient groups, and they are able to learn about new diagnoses and treatments through a variety of channels. This is a good thing, but it is also blind. Patients are not practitioners in this specialty and sometimes their knowledge can be biased. For example, recently we had a new surgical technique (Trabectome) that we were going to start, and before we even advertised it, we had patients asking about it and hearing that they got the information from some “bar”. It’s just a new technique that has its advantages and options, but it’s not that amazing. A recent article published in Ophthalmology, a leading international ophthalmology journal, pointed out that this treatment does not have the same long-term success rate as the traditional procedure, it is just an optional option without the problems of scarification, etc. It is good to see that patients have more power to make their own choices, but remember not to follow them blindly.