EyeWorld is the official news magazine of the American Society of Cataract & Refractive Surgery.
Issue link: https://digital.eyeworld.org/i/176967
September 2011 February 2013 EW GLAUCOMA 69 Helping glaucoma patients to help themselves by Tony Realini, MD but 69% of them required more than one attempt to hit the eye, and 10% required more than two attempts," she said. They made the logical assumption that the patients who required three or more attempts to successfully instill a drop of medication continued on page 70 Digital Photography Solutions for Slit Lamp Imaging Digital SLR Camera Upgrades Poor adherence predicts poor outcomes W e have more therapeutic options for treating glaucoma than ever before. New drugs and combinations, laser procedures, and innovative surgical procedures allow us to construct an individualized regimen for each patient that takes into account not only efficacy and safety but also tolerability and lifestyle issues. Despite this, adherence to glaucoma therapy is consistently shown to be suboptimal in well-designed studies. The simple truth is this: The medications don't work if the patients don't use them. New data emerging at this year's Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology meeting in Seattle suggest that poor adherence is associated with faster rates of progression, and adherence can be improved with a little effort on our part. Adherence and progression Jimena Schmidt, MD, Catholic University of Chile, Santiago, pointed out that "the main purpose of medical therapy is to control the progression of glaucoma." She previously conducted a randomized trial of two different eye drop instillation techniques, and in that study she videotaped patients instilling their drops using either an open-eye or closedeye approach to see how often they got a drop onto the eye and how many drops it took to achieve this. With this data in hand, she and colleagues conducted a retrospective analysis of visual field data from participants in that study to compare adherence rates to visual field progression rates. "We only included patients with at least six visual fields, and we then excluded the first two to minimize the effects of the learning curve associated with perimetry," she explained. In all, she collected data from 239 eyes of 134 patients. "Overall, 99% of patients did manage to dose a drop of medication onto the eye, Digital Eyepiece Camera Image Capture Software FDA cleared EMR/EHR interface DICOM compatible Come visit us @ AAO in New Orleans, booth # 4231 Made in USA TTI Medical Transamerican Technologies International can Transamerican Technologies In Toll free: 800-322-7373 Toll email: info@ttimedical.com www.ttimedical.com www.ttimedical.com