Increasing visual field testing frequency enables early glaucoma detection

Increasing visual field testing frequency can lead to the earlier detection of glaucoma, according to a study in the Archives of Ophthalmology.

Dr Kouros Nouri-Mahdavi et al., Glaucoma Division, Jules Stein Eye Institute. University of California, Los Angeles, California, USA, assessed the visual fields of 468 eyes of 381 patients from the Advanced Glaucoma Intervention Study. Patients had 10 or more reliable visual fields and 3 or more follow-up years.

A low-frequency data group was created for every other visual field examination and the original group was maintained as the high-frequency group. A global and point-wise linear regression criterion was used to compare proportion of progressing eyes and time to progression between the two groups.

For the high-frequency data group there was a median of 20 visual field examinations. In the low-frequency data group there was a median number of 12 visual field examinations. There were 204 eyes in the high-frequency data group and 160 in the low-frequency group.

The high-frequency group was more likely to detect glaucoma progression earlier on than the low-frequency group. Point-wise linear regression criteria was more likely to detect improvement in the high-frequency data set.