Twenty-year treatment trends
Ophthalmologists today are more likely to begin treatment to reduce intraocular pressure (IOP) at lower levels than twenty years ago, according to a study published in the Journal of Glaucoma, August 2008.
Ophthalmologists today are more likely to begin treatment to reduce intraocular pressure (IOP) at lower levels than twenty years ago, according to a study published in the Journal of Glaucoma, August 2008.
Catherine A. McCarty, PhD, MPH, a Senior Epidemiologist and Interim Director at The Center for Human Genetics - Marshfield Clinic Research Foundation, Marshfield, Wisconsin, US, and colleagues conducted a medical record review of glaucoma and ocular hypertension subjects prescribed IOP-lowering medication and enrolled in the Marshfield Clinic Personalized Medicine Research Project.
Among those aged ≥50 years of the 18773 subjects enrolled in the Project, the rate of glaucoma was 2.1% and the rate of ocular hypertension was 1.4%.
In 2000, prostagladins overtook topical ß-blockers as the most commonly prescribed initial treatment. By 2005, 75% of subjects were using prostaglandin analogues; 46% were using topical ß-blockers.
The researchers observed that the mean IOP at the time of medical intervention had changed significantly over the last twenty years, and that the IOP-lowering medications most commonly prescribed had also changed.
