Original ArticleFluctuation of Intraocular Pressure and Glaucoma Progression in the Early Manifest Glaucoma Trial
Section snippets
Overview
The EMGT design and methods have been described in detail elsewhere15 and are here summarized. Patients with newly detected, previously untreated glaucoma, including primary open-angle glaucoma, normal-tension glaucoma, and exfoliation glaucoma, were recruited. Eligible patients were between 50 and 80 years of age with reproducible glaucomatous visual field loss in at least 1 eye, but no advanced visual field loss, that is, mean deviation values better than −16 decibels, visual acuity equal to
Results
At data closure on March 31, 2004, the median follow-up time was 8 years (range, 0.1–11.1 years). Data from all 255 patients originally enrolled in the EMGT were included in the current analyses. Sixty-eight percent of the patients had progressed, with 59% of treated and 76% of control patients progressing. All patients in the control group remained untreated until reaching the outcome of glaucoma progression. The mean follow-up IOP was 19.5 mmHg for those who progressed and 16.5 mmHg for those
Discussion
Our results continue to support our earlier conclusions regarding the effect of the magnitude of IOP on glaucoma progression,4, 14 and we were unable to demonstrate any effect of increased IOP fluctuation on glaucoma progression. In fact, our results yielded no significant relationship between higher IOP fluctuation and glaucoma progression.
Just as in the AGIS report,13 we used the standard deviation of follow-up IOP measurements as a surrogate for IOP fluctuation, because no diurnal tension
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Cited by (0)
Manuscript no. 2006-453.
The Early Manifest Glaucoma Trial was supported by the National Eye Institute, Bethesda, Maryland (grant nos. U10EY10260, U10EY10261), and Swedish Research Council, Stockholm, Sweden.
None of the authors has any conflicts of interest related to the article.