Visual field tests on glaucoma patients

It is an unfortunate truth that many ophthalmologists still do not perform regular visual field testing on their patients with glaucoma, as recommended by the American Academy of Ophthalmology. Now there is even more evidence that failure to perform visual field testing in glaucoma is an important part of early diagnosis and treatment of that condition. Researchers at the University of California found that increasing the frequency of visual field testing results in earlier detection of glaucoma progression. The results of their findings are published online in the Archives of Ophthalmology. 381 patients participated in the study. Participants had 10 or more visual field tests for three or more years. Researchers created a low-frequency data set by eliminating every other visual field test and the original group of visual field tests made up the high-frequency set. Point and global regression analyses were used to compare the proportion of progressing eyes and the time to progression among the two sets. What researchers found is that progression was seen in 43.6 percent of the eyes in the high-frequency set compared to 34.2 percent of the low-frequency set. Elise Ervin Staff Writer