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Top-Ten of the Combined Meeting of the South East Asian Glaucoma Interest Group and the Glaucoma Society of India

December 1-3, 2006, Chennai, India

G.C. Sekhar

• Ten percent of southern Chinese persons 50 years of age and older from the Liwan Eye study had narrow angles. PAS were present in 20.5% of them. Older age and female gender were risk factors for the presence of narrow angles.

• Blue-on-yellow multifocal visual evoked potentials (mVEP) had good sensitivity (100%) and specificity (95%) in early glaucoma. Among those with visual field defects on standard achromatic perimetry (SAP) defects were generally larger on blue-on-yellow multifocal visual evoked potentials (mVEP) as compared to black/white multifocal visual evoked potentials. Averaged latency values were significantly different but showed considerable overlap.

• Simultaneous multifocal visual evoked potentials (mVEP) with binocular stimulation was able to detect glaucomatous visual field defects in subjects with unilateral perimtric glaucoma. The binocular stimulus was presented using virtual reality goggles and reduces testing time by 25%. Defects were larger and deeper with binocular compared to monocular stimulation.

• Only one percent of 132 Haag-Streit Goldmann tonometers met the manufacturer s recommended calibration error tolerance (± 0.5 mmHg). Twenty-five percent of the instruments had calibration errors greater than ±2 mmHg at 20 mmHg.

• Among newly diagnosed POAG and NTG patients without any respiratory disease who were treated with monotherapy treatment with topical timolol XE 0.5%, 10% showed reversible airway obstruction on serial spirometry at 1,3 and 6 months compared to baseline values performed prior to initiation of treatment. The beta-2 adrenoreceptor polymorphisms Cys19, C-20C and Arg16Gly were found to be associated with respiratory obstruction. T-20 and Gln27 haploptypes appeared to be protective.

• Silent cerebral infarct (SCI), a neuro-imaging feature without neurological symptoms for stroke, was strongly associated with a diagnosis of NTG as compared to POAG.

• Depression was common among patients recently diagnosed to have irreversible blindness; those with unilateral disease were more likely to be depressed than those with bilateral disease.

• The cost of treating all ocular hypertensives in USA with Timolol maleate including office visits was estimated to be 20 million US dollars per year.

• Of 1000 compounds screened in animals models for treating ischemic stroke, 114 entered human clinical trials, but none were successful raising questions about the feasibility of neuroprotection as a treatment modality in medicine. However, glaucoma resembles neurodegenerative diseases which are more likely to benefit from neuroprotective agents than the ischemic stroke.

• Absence or lower levels of the BAX protein in mice deficient in the Bax gene was protective against neurodegeneration in mouse models of glaucoma.