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Report on the Glaucoma Publications Interest Group (G-PIG) meeting
Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA, April 30th, 2000
Don Minckler
Comment regarding definitions/standards
A Glaucoma Publications Interest Group (G-PIG) convened for the first time on Sunday, April 30th, 2000, in Fort Lauderdale, FL, USA, sponsored by the Foundation for Glaucoma Research. The purpose of this meeting was to seek consensus among vision editors, methodologists and participant-representatives of international glaucoma societies as to the desirability of developing a more standardized terminology for glaucoma publication purposes. The two principal reasons for pursuing increased standardization are to facilitate the pooling and comparison of data from different clinical research studies, and to promote improved quality of research publications.
The agenda began with brief comments by Kay Dickersin and Richard Wormald on the status of international databases on clinical trials, including the Cochrane collaboration. Thereafter, Douglas Anderson commented on the difficulty of precisely defining glaucoma; Bob Weinreb discussed ocular hypertension; Richard Mills commented on visual acuity and intraocular pressure measurements; Bernard Schwartz discussed evaluating the optic disc; Paul Palmberg commented on angle closure; Anders Heijl discussed defining a visual field defect; Chris Johnson discussed how to define visual field progression; and Richard Parrish commented on terminology as applied to disease in general and definitions of success or failure of glaucoma therapy. Lloyd Hildebrand introduced the group to the American Academy of Ophthalmology's (AAO) convergent terminology project and the desirability of synchronizing this glaucoma-specific effort with a global terminology project being done by the AAO.
The group consensus was that this process should be continued and that the initial goal will be to develop a glossary of internationally acceptable terms applicable to diagnosis, treatment, and outcome assessment for the various forms of glaucoma. The vision editors' group that now meets regularly at the annual meeting of the AAO will be an integral part of this evolving project. Glaucoma societies from all regions of the world, many of which were represented at this initial meeting, will be encouraged to form committees to discuss these concepts and provide continual feedback to the process.
This G-PIG initiative represents a logical extension and expansion of Ophthalmology's previously published study design scheme and worksheets, specific to glaucoma. Other sub-specialty societies are being encouraged to consider similar efforts.
A follow-up open G-PIG meeting will occur at the AAO meeting in Dallas, Texas, 22nd-25th October, 2000; most likely on Tuesday morning, October 24th. Meeting details will be announced as soon as possible via the Glaucoma-Net. All interested individuals are encouraged to attend and participate.
