Glaucoma is a disease of the eyes that damages the optic nerve. The health of the optic nerve is necessary for proper vision. Abnormally high pressure in your eye can be the reason behind such damage to the optic nerve. Glaucoma is a common cause of blindness for people above the age of 60. The study was carried to understand how good the modern imaging instruments are in screening such as spectral-domain optical coherence tomography (Cirrus SD-OCT), scanning laser polarimetry (GDx) and scanning laser ophthalmoscopy (Heidelberg Retinal Tomograph, HRT3)of Glaucoma.

The study examined 6060 eyes of 3039 subjects; in the clinical evaluation, glaucomatous damage was found in 33 subjects (1.1%) in 43 eyes. The following sensitivities were obtained; RNFL analysis (53%), GCIPL analysis (50%), OCT combination analysis (61%), GDx (56%) and HRT (31%) with corresponding specificities of 95%, 92%, 90%, 88% and 96%. The area under the curve values were 0.76, 0.73, 0.75, 0.75 and 0.73, respectively. Post-test probabilities of glaucoma after positive imaging findings with each of these methods in this unselected population were 11%, 7%, 6%, 5% and 7%, respectively.

Screening capabilities of the OCT, GDx and HRT were found to be similar.

Reference: https://bjo.bmj.com/content/104/10/1399?rss=1

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