Detecting progressive visual field loss.

Involvement in shared care projects requires the optometrist to make a series of decisions one of which is an assessment of the visual field data to see if there has been any progression. To aid the optometrist in making this decision, the relationship between inter-test variability in the visual field and extent of loss has been established for the Henson CFS2000 perimeter. In this study, visual field data were collected, with a supra-threshold strategy, from 174 eyes (89 patients) over a period of 2 years, there being a total of 595 visual field records. The sample included patients with both normal and glaucomatous visual fields. The results show that analysis based upon the number of stimuli missed at 5 or more dB above the threshold estimate reveals an increasing variability with extent of loss. These data can be used by optometrists to establish the significance of any change in the number of missed stimuli from one visit to the next.