WEDNESDAY, Aug. 10 (HealthDay News) -- Increased frequency of visual field testing leads to earlier detection of glaucoma progression, according to a study published online Aug. 8 in the Archives of Ophthalmology.
Kouros Nouri-Mahdavi, M.D., from the University of California in Los Angeles, and colleagues investigated whether increased frequency of visual field testing results in earlier detection of glaucoma progression in 468 eyes from 381 patients with 10 or more visual field tests for three or more years of follow-up. A low-frequency data set was created by deleting every other visual field examination, and the original group of visual field tests comprised the high-frequency set. The proportion of progressing eyes and the time to progression were compared for the two sets, using point and global regression analyses.
The investigators found that the median number of visual field examinations was 20 for the high-frequency and 12 for the low-frequency data sets. Progression was seen in 204 eyes (43.6 percent) in the high-frequency and 160 eyes (34.2 percent) in the low-frequency set based on primary mean deviation criteria; whereas, according to pointwise linear regression, 185 eyes (39.5 percent) in the high-frequency and 167 eyes (35.7 percent) in the low-frequency set progressed. Progression was more likely to be detected in the high-frequency data set with both mean deviation (hazard ratio [HR], 1.69) and point-wise linear regression (HR, 1.52). A similar number of improving eyes was seen in the high- and low-frequency groups with mean deviation criteria; whereas, point-wise linear regression criteria were more likely to detect improvement in the high-frequency data group (HR, 2.27).
"Increasing the frequency of visual field testing leads to earlier detection of glaucoma progression," the authors write.
Abstract
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