Glaucoma — Specialty Profile

Exploratory, not prescriptive. This profile blends hard data (pay, match rates, burnout, demographics, each sourced and dated) with generalizations and synthesized opinion about culture and "who fits." It's here to help you get curious and go find out for yourself, not to tell you who to become. Numbers marked ⟳ verify change every year; check the linked source before you quote one. Last reviewed: 2026-08-04.

Also called: glaucoma service, glaucoma and anterior segment surgery. A 1-year fellowship entered after an ophthalmology residency, not a residency you match into from medical school. Organ system: the optic nerve, and the drainage angle whose failure destroys it.

Subspecialty fellowship of Ophthalmology.

The 30-second version

Glaucoma is a progressive optic neuropathy that takes peripheral vision so gradually that most patients cannot tell it is happening, which makes this the ophthalmology subspecialty defined by managing a silent disease over decades. The only modifiable risk factor is intraocular pressure, so the entire therapeutic enterprise is lowering it: drops first, then laser, then surgery. What has changed the field in the last fifteen years is the arrival of minimally invasive glaucoma surgery, a family of small stents and angle procedures that can be performed at the time of cataract surgery with a fraction of the risk of traditional filtering surgery. That moved a large volume of glaucoma intervention earlier in the disease and into the hands of a wider range of surgeons, while leaving glaucoma specialists with the harder end: trabeculectomy, tube shunts, and the eyes where everything has already failed. The defining clinical problem is not diagnostic difficulty but adherence, since a substantial share of patients do not take drops that prevent a symptom they do not yet have. The trade at the center of the field: intellectually rigorous longitudinal care that genuinely prevents blindness, in a subspecialty whose surgery is technically demanding and whose patients often cannot feel the benefit.

Quick dashboard (details and sources below)


Training after med school	5 years (1 intern year + 3 yr ophthalmology + 1 yr glaucoma fellowship)
Total from college start	~13 years (4 undergrad + 4 med school + 4 ophthalmology training + 1 fellowship)
Training chain	Med school (4) → intern year → Ophthalmology (3 yr, SF Match) → 1 yr glaucoma fellowship (SF Match)
Competitiveness (as an ophthalmology fellowship)	Moderate. Well below oculoplastics and retina, and among the field's larger fellowship pools ⟳
Typical full-time pay	No glaucoma survey line. Parent ophthalmology runs ~$410,000–$490,000, with partners and owners around $610,000 ⟳
Pay vs. parent (comprehensive ophthalmology)	Roughly comparable. Clinic and testing volume plus MIGS at cataract surgery, without a cash-pay component ⟳
Lifestyle	Outpatient, clinic-heavy, elective surgery, light call with acute angle closure as the exception ⟳
Burnout	No subspecialty figure; parent ophthalmology is 25.8% against a 41.9% all-physician average (AMA 2025), second-lowest of the rows it names ⟳
% women	No published subspecialty figure; parent ophthalmology 28% practicing and 42.6% of residents ⟳
DO / IMG accessibility	Gated behind one of the least open residencies (DO seniors ~34% match rate; IMG ~2% of matched) ⟳

What they actually do

The diagnostic work is longitudinal pattern reading rather than a single test. Glaucoma is diagnosed and monitored by combining intraocular pressure, optic nerve head appearance, visual field testing, and optical coherence tomography of the retinal nerve fiber layer, and the crucial judgment is whether a patient is progressing. That question is answered by comparing a series of imperfect, noisy tests over years, which is a genuinely difficult analytic skill and the thing the fellowship most reliably teaches.

The treatment ladder is the framework of practice. Topical medication first, then selective laser trabeculoplasty, then surgery. Where a given patient sits on that ladder depends on their pressure, the rate of their progression, their life expectancy, and whether they actually use their drops.

Minimally invasive glaucoma surgery reshaped the middle of that ladder. Trabecular micro-bypass stents, canal-based procedures, goniotomy, and subconjunctival micro-stents can be performed at the time of cataract surgery, offering modest pressure reduction with a far better safety profile than filtering surgery. That has pulled surgical intervention earlier and made glaucoma surgery something comprehensive ophthalmologists also perform, which has changed what glaucoma specialists are referred.

The traditional operations remain the hard end. Trabeculectomy creates a new drainage pathway under a scleral flap and depends on controlling the eye's own healing response, which is why it needs intensive post-operative management and antifibrotic agents. Glaucoma drainage devices, meaning tube shunts, are increasingly the alternative. Cyclophotocoagulation reduces aqueous production in eyes where nothing else has worked.

Angle closure is the acute half. Acute angle closure with a pressure in the fifties and a painful red eye is one of ophthalmology's true emergencies, treated with pressure-lowering therapy and laser peripheral iridotomy, and the fellow-eye iridotomy that prevents the same thing happening again.

Representative procedures: selective laser trabeculoplasty · laser peripheral iridotomy · trabeculectomy with antifibrotic agents · glaucoma drainage device implantation · MIGS stents, goniotomy, and canaloplasty, usually combined with cataract surgery · cyclophotocoagulation · bleb needling and revision · cataract surgery, which forms a large part of the practice · gonioscopy, visual field interpretation, and OCT progression analysis.¹²

A day in the life: clinic-dominant. A glaucoma clinic is a high-volume operation built around testing: patients cycle through pressure checks, visual fields, and imaging, and the physician's task is largely interpretation and decision-making across a large longitudinal panel. Surgical days are outpatient lists mixing cataract extraction, MIGS, and the occasional trabeculectomy or tube. Post-operative management after filtering surgery is unusually intensive, with frequent visits, suture manipulation, and bleb needling in the weeks after the operation.

On call: light, with a genuine exception. Acute angle closure needs same-day treatment, and post-operative complications after filtering surgery, including hypotony and bleb infection, arrive without warning.

The training path & time to completion

Medical school (4 yrs) → PGY-1 intern year → ophthalmology residency (3 yrs, entered through the separate SF Match) → 1-year glaucoma fellowship → practice.¹³

The residency is the hard gate, matched through the separate SF Match, with DO seniors matching at roughly 34% and IMGs at about 2% of matched positions.⁴ The parent ophthalmology profile covers it.
The fellowship is one year, the ophthalmology standard; only vitreoretinal surgery and oculoplastics run two.
It matches through SF Match under the AUPO Fellowship Compliance Committee framework, is not ACGME-accredited, and leads to no subspecialty board, since the American Board of Ophthalmology issues no subspecialty certificates.³⁴
Total from the start of college: about 13 years.

What the fellowship buys, stated precisely. Comprehensive ophthalmologists manage glaucoma medically, perform SLT, and increasingly perform MIGS at the time of cataract surgery. What the fellowship adds is trabeculectomy and tube shunt surgery, the management of their complications, complex and refractory disease, secondary and childhood glaucomas, and the analytic skill of judging progression across imperfect data. It makes you the person who takes the eyes nobody else wants.

How competitive is it?

No published match statistics exist for individual ophthalmology fellowships, since SF Match does not release subspecialty-level applicant data publicly.

What can be said:

Glaucoma is generally described within the field as one of ophthalmology's larger fellowship pools, with more programs and positions than the small subspecialties. No release publishes the position counts that would confirm it.
It is meaningfully less competitive than oculoplastics and vitreoretinal surgery, which the field regards as its two hardest.⁵
The residency upstream is one of the hardest matches in medicine.⁴
Interest has been affected by the MIGS shift in both directions: more residents are exposed to glaucoma surgery than before, and some perceive that comprehensive ophthalmologists can now do the profitable part of it.

The honest read. Reachable for an ophthalmology resident who wants it, with the competitive programs being the high-volume surgical ones. As across ophthalmology, the selection that mattered happened at the residency match.

Board: none specific to glaucoma. General certification through the American Board of Ophthalmology.⁴

Compensation — the robust version

No compensation survey isolates glaucoma. What follows reasons from the parent field and the revenue structure.

The parent anchor. Comprehensive ophthalmology runs roughly $410,000–$490,000 total compensation, with a W-2 employee figure near $476,000, partners and owners near $610,000, and retina near $700,000 as the field's high earner.⁴ ⟳

Glaucoma sits roughly at the parent field's level rather than above it, and the reasons are structural.

There is no cash-pay component. Unlike oculoplastics with cosmetic surgery or cornea with refractive work, glaucoma is entirely insurance-billed. Nothing in the practice is elective in the consumer sense.
The clinic generates substantial technical revenue. Visual fields, OCT, and photography are billable diagnostic tests performed at high frequency across a large longitudinal panel, and in a practice that owns its equipment that is a meaningful revenue stream.
Cataract surgery is a large part of the practice, and MIGS performed at the same sitting adds reimbursed surgical value. This is the main way the MIGS era improved glaucoma economics.
Filtering surgery is poorly compensated relative to its difficulty. A trabeculectomy takes longer than a cataract extraction, carries far more risk, and requires weeks of intensive post-operative visits that fall inside the global surgical period, meaning they generate no additional billing. The hardest work in the field is close to its least remunerative.

The practical implication. A glaucoma specialist's income is driven by clinic volume, testing, and cataract-plus-MIGS throughput rather than by the complex surgery that defines the subspecialty. As throughout ophthalmology, ambulatory surgery center ownership moves income more than the subspecialty does.

Limited-data caveat: no MGMA, Doximity, or Medscape line for glaucoma was located. The parent figures are sourced; the positioning is structural reasoning about the revenue model. Benchmark against comprehensive ophthalmology and against the specific clinic, cataract, and surgical mix on offer. ⟳

Lifestyle

Parent ophthalmology has one of medicine's best lifestyle profiles, outpatient with elective surgery, light call, and among the lowest burnout of any specialty the AMA's 2025 survey names.⁴
The practice is clinic-weighted rather than OR-weighted, more so than most ophthalmology subspecialties, which suits people who prefer decision-making to operating.
Call is light with a sharp exception. Acute angle closure requires same-day intervention, and post-trabeculectomy complications can present urgently.
Post-operative intensity is the hidden schedule cost. Filtering surgery generates frequent early visits and manipulations, so a trabeculectomy is a commitment of weeks rather than of an operating hour.
Geographic flexibility is good. Glaucoma is common everywhere and the disease burden rises with an aging population, so demand is broad and not concentrated in academic centers.

Lifestyle rating: 4/5. Outpatient, elective, and controllable, deducted for high clinic volume and the post-operative demands of filtering surgery.

Wellbeing — the part to take seriously

No glaucoma-specific wellbeing data exists. Inherit ophthalmology, which the AMA's 2025 Organizational Biopsy puts at 25.8% against a 41.9% all-physician average, second-lowest of the rows it names and sixteen points under the baseline.⁴ ⟳

The distinctive frustration is adherence, and it is the defining professional problem of the field. Glaucoma treatment asks patients to instill drops daily, often several times a day, often for the rest of their lives, to prevent a symptom they do not currently have. A substantial share do not, and the visual field damage that results is irreversible. Physicians in this field spend a career watching preventable loss occur for reasons that are not clinical, and the response, meaning better counseling, laser as a first-line alternative, and earlier surgery, is a large part of what the specialty argues about.

The emotional register is unusual: quiet and cumulative. There is no dramatic save here. A successful glaucoma career is one where a large number of people never notice anything happened to them. Practitioners describe finding meaning in that, and also describe it as requiring a particular temperament, since the work is invisible to the person it benefits most.

The surgical anxiety is specific. Trabeculectomy depends on modulating the eye's own healing, which means outcomes are less predictable than in most ophthalmic surgery, and complications such as hypotony, bleb leak, and endophthalmitis can arrive months or years later. Operating on an eye that already has limited vision, where a complication could take the rest, is a particular kind of stress.

Career longevity is good, with seated microsurgery, manageable call, and a practice that can be tapered toward clinic.

Who's in the field (demographics)

No published glaucoma-specific demographic data was located. Inherit ophthalmology, directionally.

Women: parent ophthalmology runs 28% women practicing (AAMC, 2022 data) and 42.6% of residents (ACGME, AY2024-25).⁴ ⟳ The glaucoma fellowship is not counted separately in either release.
DO: low and set upstream, with DO seniors matching ophthalmology at roughly 34%.⁴ ⟳
IMG: very low, at about 2% of matched ophthalmology positions.⁴ ⟳
Underrepresented in medicine: no subspecialty figure, and the mismatch is real. Glaucoma prevalence is substantially higher in Black and Hispanic populations, and both onset and severity differ: in a nationwide cohort of 2,982 patients with primary glaucoma, Black participants were diagnosed at a mean age of 60 against 66 for White participants and carried more than twice the odds of severe disease, and Hispanic or Latino participants were diagnosed at 61 against 65.⁶ So this subspecialty serves a population that ophthalmology's workforce composition does not reflect. ⟳

Culture, personality & the online stereotypes

Who gravitates here: ophthalmology residents who liked the reasoning more than the operating. Glaucoma attracts analytically minded people who enjoy interpreting longitudinal data and are comfortable with uncertainty, since deciding whether a patient is progressing is a probabilistic judgment rather than a finding. It also attracts people who want long-term relationships with patients, since a glaucoma panel is followed for decades. As always, plenty of people in the field do not fit any single mold.

The stereotypes. Community perception rather than fact, each with a kernel and an unfair edge:

"The internists of ophthalmology." Meant descriptively and largely accurate: chronic disease, medication management, longitudinal follow-up, and a treatment ladder.
"MIGS took the fun part." A real professional discussion rather than a joke. Comprehensive ophthalmologists now perform much of the early surgical intervention, leaving specialists with more complex and less well-reimbursed work.
"Nobody thanks you." Fair. Preventing painless, invisible loss produces no gratitude event, and the field is honest that this requires a certain temperament.
"Trabs are scary." Widely held and not unreasonable, since filtering surgery has the least predictable outcome profile in anterior segment surgery.

What people say online (synthesized and paraphrased, not quotes): across trainee and physician forums, glaucoma reads as intellectually respected and economically unglamorous. The recurring theme is the MIGS shift, discussed at length, with the consensus being that it improved patient care and complicated the subspecialty's value proposition, since general ophthalmologists can now do the profitable interventions. A second thread is compensation, generally described as comparable to comprehensive ophthalmology, without the refractive or cosmetic upside that cornea and oculoplastics have. A third is adherence, discussed with real frustration as the thing that limits outcomes more than any surgical technique. A fourth is the appeal of the work itself, which posters describe in unusually warm terms: the reasoning is interesting, the patients are long-term, and the disease matters. The tone is thoughtful and a bit resigned about the economics.

Voices from the field. Paraphrased from published sources, with links to the originals:

Glaucoma fellowships are matched through SF Match under the AUPO Fellowship Compliance Committee framework, run one year, and are not ACGME-accredited.²³
The American Board of Ophthalmology issues no subspecialty certificates, so glaucoma specialists remain board-certified general ophthalmologists, the same structure the project's vitreoretinal surgery profile documents for retina.⁴
Applicant guidance places oculoplastics and vitreoretinal surgery as ophthalmology's most competitive fellowships, with glaucoma among the more attainable.⁵

Why people choose it / why people leave

Why choose it: work that genuinely prevents blindness in a disease that is a leading cause of it worldwide · intellectually demanding longitudinal reasoning across imperfect data · decades-long relationships with patients · a treatment ladder that rewards judgment rather than only technique · technically challenging surgery at the complex end · a one-year fellowship · broad geographic demand that grows with an aging population.

Why leave or avoid it: no cash-pay component, so compensation sits at the parent field's level while cornea and oculoplastics have upside · filtering surgery is poorly reimbursed relative to its difficulty and post-operative burden · adherence failure limits outcomes in ways clinical skill cannot fix · MIGS moved the well-reimbursed intervention toward comprehensive ophthalmologists · high clinic volume · no gratitude event, since success is a non-event for the patient.

Best fit if: you like chronic disease management and longitudinal data · you want long-term patient relationships · you are comfortable with probabilistic judgment · you find prevention as satisfying as cure · you want an outpatient life with light call.

Not for you if: you want dramatic, visible results · you want the highest ophthalmology income · high clinic volume would exhaust you · unpredictable surgical outcomes would weigh on you · you need patients to be able to feel that you helped them.

The FLI angle — Glaucoma for first-gen, low-income & immigrant students

Where it fits FLI realities well:

Geographic freedom is genuine. Glaucoma is common everywhere, the burden rises with population age, and the practice does not require a specific institution or a wealthy cash-pay market. If living near family matters, this is one of the more accommodating ophthalmology subspecialties.
The income is strong in absolute terms, at a parent-field level of roughly $410,000–$490,000, with ownership as a further lever.⁴
One year of fellowship keeps the opportunity cost low.
The lifestyle is sustainable, outpatient and among the lowest-burnout in medicine.
The patient population may be your own community. Glaucoma falls disproportionately on Black and Hispanic patients, and it is caught later and found more advanced in both groups.⁶ Access to consistent care is a large part of why outcomes differ. A physician who understands those barriers from the inside is doing something the field needs.

Risks to name honestly:

The residency is the barrier, and it is among the least FLI-accessible in medicine. DO seniors match ophthalmology at roughly 34% and IMGs at about 2% of matched positions, through a separate early SF Match.⁴ Research, away rotations, and mentorship decide it, and all three cost money. If ophthalmology is the goal, plan from the first two years of medical school.
This is the ophthalmology subspecialty with the least income upside, because it has no cash-pay component and its hardest surgery is its worst-reimbursed.⁴ That is a real trade against cornea or oculoplastics, and it should be made knowingly.
PSLF fits academic practice and not private groups or ASC ownership, the same fork that runs through this specialty.
The invisible-benefit problem is worth testing on yourself. Some people find preventing silent loss deeply satisfying and others need to see the result. A glaucoma rotation will tell you which you are, and it is worth doing before you commit.

Bottom line for FLI: once through the ophthalmology match, glaucoma offers a strong income, real geographic freedom, a sustainable life, and work that matters disproportionately to communities that are underserved in exactly this disease. What you give up is the earning ceiling that cornea and oculoplastics reach through cash-pay work. That is a legitimate trade, and it is one to make with the numbers in front of you.

Fun facts

The disease is silent by design. Glaucoma takes peripheral vision first and the brain fills in the gaps, so patients typically notice nothing until the loss is advanced and irreversible.
Intraocular pressure is the only modifiable risk factor, which is why the entire therapeutic repertoire, from drops to lasers to tubes, does one thing.
MIGS changed who operates. Small stents and angle procedures performed at cataract surgery moved a large share of glaucoma intervention to comprehensive ophthalmologists.
Trabeculectomy is a wound-healing operation as much as a surgical one. Its success depends on preventing the eye from healing the drainage pathway closed, which is why antifibrotic agents are part of the procedure.
Acute angle closure is one of the few ophthalmic emergencies a non-ophthalmologist might recognize, presenting with a painful red eye, a fixed mid-dilated pupil, nausea, and a pressure in the fifties.
Prevention is a non-event. A successful glaucoma career means a large number of people never find out what would have happened.

Sources

Corrected 2026-08-17: the four compensation figures above and the DO/IMG pair reached a reader with no publisher behind them on this page. Inheriting the parent field's numbers is this atlas's design; inheriting them without the parent's citation traveling with them makes them uncheckable at the point of use. The citations are carried in here. Compensation, all from the ophthalmology profile's own source list: the ~$410k–$490k band spans Medscape's Ophthalmologist Compensation Report 2025 at ~$409,000 on 2024 data (paywalled; relayed via Physicians Thrive, https://physiciansthrive.com/physician-compensation/ophthalmologist-salary/, and Becker's ASC, https://www.beckersasc.com/ophthalmology/ophthalmologist-pay-remains-flat-10-new-compensation-stats/) and Doximity's 2025 Physician Compensation Report at $477,232 on 2024 data (https://www.doximity.com/reports/physician-compensation-report/2025). The W-2 employee figure of ~$476,000, the partner-or-owner figure of ~$610,000 and the retina figure of ~$700,000 are all from Physician Side Gigs, Average Ophthalmologist Salary (2023–24 data), a self-reported physician survey: https://www.physiciansidegigs.com/average-ophthalmologist-salary.

DO and IMG access: ophthalmology residency runs through the SF Match rather than the NRMP, so the NRMP Results and Data tables that supply DO and IMG shares for the rest of this site do not cover it. Both figures are from the 2025 Ophthalmology Residency Match General Report, AUPO/SF Match, https://aupo-24-prod-backend.parallelpublicworks.com/sites/default/files/2025-11/2025-SFMatch-Results-Explanations.pdf: US DO seniors matched at 34% and DO graduates at 36%, and international graduates were 2% of the matched class, 11 of 524, with international seniors matching at 0%. See the ophthalmology and vitreoretinal surgery profiles on this site. ⟳

Clinical scope and fellowship content — medical, laser, MIGS, and filtering surgical management of glaucoma, angle closure, secondary and childhood glaucomas, and the diagnostic apparatus of tonometry, gonioscopy, visual field testing, and OCT progression analysis. Composite of published US glaucoma fellowship curricula: Washington University Clinical Fellowships (https://ophthalmology.wustl.edu/education/clinical-fellowships/), UCSF Fellowship Programs (https://ophthalmology.ucsf.edu/fellowship-programs/), and UCLA Ophthalmology Fellowship Training Programs (https://www.uclahealth.org/departments/eye/training-and-education/training-programs/ophthalmology-fellowship-training-programs), accessed 2026. ↩ ↩²
Match structure. Glaucoma fellowships are processed through SF Match alongside cornea and external disease, pediatric ophthalmology, neuro-ophthalmology, and uveitis; ophthalmic plastic and reconstructive surgery runs its own ASOPRS-sponsored process. SF Match — Ophthalmology Fellowship (https://www.sfmatch.org/specialty/ophthalmology-fellowship) and Association of University Professors of Ophthalmology, SF Match (https://aupo.org/sfmatch), accessed 2026. ↩ ↩²
Fellowship oversight and accreditation status. Most ophthalmology fellowships, glaucoma among them, are overseen by the AUPO Fellowship Compliance Committee rather than the ACGME, and matched through the SF Match Central Application Service rather than the NRMP; most run one year, with vitreoretinal surgery and oculoplastics the two-year exceptions. Ophthalmic plastic and reconstructive surgery is the exception on accreditation: ACGME's Data Resource Book, Academic Year 2024-2025 carries a row for it under Ophthalmology — 4 accredited programs and 5 fellows — and the book counts accredited programs (https://www.acgme.org/globalassets/pfassets/publicationsbooks/2024-2025_acgme_databook_document.pdf). Corrected 2026-08-17: this footnote generalized the non-ACGME status to ophthalmology fellowships as a class, which the book's own row refutes. Glaucoma's own status, stated in the training section, is unaffected. See the vitreoretinal surgery profile on this site. ⟳ ↩ ↩² ↩³
Parent-field figures for ophthalmology: comprehensive ophthalmology typical comp ~$410k–$490k, with W-2 employee ~$476k, partner or owner ~$610k, and retina ~$700k; 4 years of training (1 intern + 3 ophthalmology) and ~12 years from the start of college; competitiveness rivaling dermatology and plastics, matched through the separate SF Match; burnout 25.8%, second-lowest of the rows the AMA names; 28% women practicing and 42.6% of residents; DO seniors ~34% match rate and IMG ~2% of matched positions; no American Board of Ophthalmology subspecialty certificates. Burnout: AMA Organizational Biopsy 2025 — nearly 19,000 physician responses across 106 health systems in 38 states — puts Ophthalmology at 25.8% against a 41.9% all-physician average, second-lowest of the rows it names, https://www.ama-assn.org/practice-management/physician-health/these-9-physician-specialties-report-highest-burnout-rates. Corrected 2026-08-17: the dashboard and the wellbeing section now lead with the AMA row rather than Medscape's 39%. AMA is the instrument this page prefers wherever it publishes a row, because it is free, primary and current, and ophthalmology is one of the roughly fifteen the Organizational Biopsy breaks out. The Medscape rank this page used to carry — tied with psychiatry for second-lowest of the twenty-six specialties that report covers — was computed in the Medscape frame and has been dropped rather than restated, because a rank does not carry across instruments whose baselines are seven points apart. The Medscape reading, no longer the page's anchor: Physician Burnout & Depression Report 2024 (n=9,226, fielded July–October 2023) puts ophthalmology at 39% against a 49% all-physician average. That report is paywalled and returns HTTP 402, so the row reaches this site through one relay that reprints it: Healthgrades Pro (https://resources.healthgrades.com/pro/the-most-and-least-burned-out-physicians-by-specialty), which publishes twenty of the report's twenty-six specialty rows, ten most and ten least burned out. Advisory Board's write-up of the same report (https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2024/01/31/physician-burnout) agrees on the edition and the instrument and carries no specialty table, so it does not corroborate the row. Corrected 2026-08-17: this note claimed three independent relays and named two, one of which publishes no specialty figures at all. The body called ophthalmology "the second-lowest of the twenty specialties it lists", which attributed the relay's row count to Medscape and missed the tie with psychiatry. Women practicing: AAMC, "Women are changing the face of medicine in America" (2022 data), https://www.aamc.org/news/women-are-changing-face-medicine-america, which puts ophthalmology at 28%. Women residents: ACGME, Data Resource Book, Academic Year 2024-2025, Table C.21, https://www.acgme.org/globalassets/pfassets/publicationsbooks/2024-2025_acgme_databook_document.pdf — ophthalmology 42.6%. Corrected 2026-08-13: this page carried ~25–26% practicing and ~40–44% of residents. Neither release breaks out glaucoma fellows. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴
Relative fellowship competitiveness within ophthalmology — ASOPRS oculoplastic surgery and vitreoretinal fellowships identified as the most competitive. "The Ophthalmology Resident's Guide to Fellowship Applications," Eyes On Eyecare. https://eyesoneyecare.com/resources/ophthalmology-resident-guide-fellowship-applications/ (accessed 2026). ⟳ ↩ ↩²
Racial and ethnic disparities in glaucoma onset and severity. Acuff K, Saseendrakumar BR, Wu JH, Weinreb RN, Baxter SL, "Racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic disparities in glaucoma onset and severity in a diverse nationwide cohort in the United States," Journal of Glaucoma 32(9):792–799, 2023 — 2,982 participants with primary glaucoma drawn from the NIH All of Us Research Program. Black/African American participants were diagnosed at a mean age of 60 against 66 for White participants (p<0.001) and carried an adjusted odds ratio of 2.20 (95% CI 1.62–3.00) for a more severe glaucoma diagnosis; participants identifying as Hispanic or Latino were diagnosed at a mean age of 61 against 65 (p=0.001). https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10527068/ Added 2026-08-17: the demographics section and the FLI section both rested this claim on nothing, in a file that cited everything else. ↩ ↩²

Researched with AI assistance and reviewed by hand. How this site is made