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.

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.