Association of reliability with reproducibility of the glaucomatous visual field.

We studied 207 glaucoma patients (207 eyes) who had two successive visual tests on the Humphrey Field Analyzer to determine the association of unreliability (> 10% incidence of a missed catch trial test) with threshold variation. We found that in patients where one visual field showed > 30% false negative or positive errors, and the other visual field also was unreliable, a significant increase in the variance of the mean defect existed from reliable patients (p < 0.05). Of patients who had only one of two visual fields which was unreliable (from false negative errors), only those with marked glaucomatous visual field loss (< -15 dB depth of defect) showed a greater variance in mean defect between examinations over reliable patients (p < 0.05). In total, 41 patients (19.8%) had unreliable visual fields associated with statistically increased threshold variation. This study suggests that patient reliability should be considered when interpreting changes in threshold between automated visual field examinations.