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Abstract #90530 Published in IGR 21-3

Agreement amongst consultant ophthalmologists on levels of visual disability required for eligibility for certificate of sight impairment : Sight impairment registration using binocular composite visual fields

Jawaid I; Stead RE; Rotchford AR; King AJ
Eye 2021; 35: 1644-1650


BACKGROUND: Registration as sight impaired allows access to services important for patients. The rates of sight impairment due to visual field loss are underestimated. Previous work has shown that evaluation of visual field defects in both eyes produces poor agreement among ophthalmologists for categorisation of patients as eligible for sight impairment registration. AIM: To evaluate the impact of binocular summation of both eye glaucomatous visual field defects on agreement for sight impairment registration. METHODS: Thirty consultant ophthalmologists (Graders), graded 50 glaucomatous visual field sets. Each consisted of both monocular fields and summated binocular plots. Graders classified the visual field sets as sight impaired (SI), severely sight impaired (SSI) or neither. Trichotomous, (SI, SSI or no sight impairment) and dichotomous (any sight impairment versus no sight impairment) concordance values were estimated for the group of graders as a whole and for glaucoma and non-glaucoma experts. RESULTS: For trichotomous analysis the overall kappa agreement rate was 0.29; for dichotomous analysis it was 0.40. There was no material difference between glaucoma experts and non-experts. CONCLUSION: Overall agreement was modest. Grading for SI showed the poorest levels of agreement. Using binocular fields does not appear to improve concordance for sight impairment registration. Moreover, there is no difference in agreement between glaucoma and non-glaucoma experts. An overall score for visual disability using mean deviation may be a more pragmatic approach.

Queen's Medical Centre, Derby Road, Nottingham, NG72UH, UK.

Full article

Classification:

1.4 Quality of life (Part of: 1 General aspects)
1.5 Glaucomas as cause of blindness (Part of: 1 General aspects)
6.6.2 Automated (Part of: 6 Clinical examination methods > 6.6 Visual field examination and other visual function tests)



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