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Top X of the Inaugural Meeting of the Southeast Asian Glaucoma Interest Group (SEAGIG)

November 26-29, 2000, Bangkok, Thailand

Prin RojanaPongpun

The SEAGIG Bangkok 2000 meeting was organized by the Thai Glaucoma Society together with the SEAGIG committee and the Asian-Oceanic Glaucoma Society (AOGS) in order to present major advances in glaucoma activities in the Southeast Asian region. While the conference primarily focused on the various aspects of angle-closure glaucoma, other aspects of glaucoma diagnosis and management were also extensively discussed.

There was an overwhelming response from the 500 ophthalmologists interested in glaucoma who attended the meeting. The meeting itself was very invigorating, with a social program that was informal enough to allow everyone time to make new friends and to rekindle established relations against a background of the beauty and magic of Thailand. The congress ended with a night-time display of fireworks and a tour the following day.

The organizing committee would like to extend their deepest and most sincere thanks to all the invited speakers from overseas, for their time and their contribution to making the meeting a success.

SEAGIG TOP X

• No consensus was reached on what is an occludable angle. An acceptable definition seems to be when all pigmented TM is closed appositionally, not just narrowly and not a synechial closure, to at least 180 degrees in the dark.

• At least 16.6% of a study group aged over 50 years, taken from a population-based glaucoma survey in Bangkok, had gonioscopically occludable and/or closed angles.

• Laser PI has been shown to be very effective in preventing acute attacks in the fellow eye of acute angle-closure glaucoma patients. However, on follow-up, 5.6% had a subsequent rise of intraocular pressure (IOP), despite patent PI.

• Seventy to 100% of eyes (from two separate Southeast Asian studies) required further treatment after acute attacks of angle-closure glaucoma, despite patent LPI. Approximately two-thirds needed surgical intervention. PAS extending to more than 180 degrees was associated with the development of chronic angle-closure glaucoma.

• FDP screening strategy was once again shown to have high sensitivity for detecting definite cases of glaucoma from two separate studies.

• Neuroprotection needs to be verified and proved to be of clinical benefit in long-term human studies. It was repeated that good "control of IOP" is still the best "neuroprotective" treatment for glaucoma today.

• It has been shown that both latanoprost and brimonidine are effective in reducing IOP in chronic angle-closure glaucoma, and that latanoprost is superior to timolol.

• In the progression of visual field loss in normal-tension glaucoma, disc hemorrhage is still a significant prognostic factor and calcium channel blockers are effective in preserving the visual field. Indications for surgery should be limited.

• Subconjunctival injection of mitomycin C enhances the success of needle revision in post-trabeculectomy bleb failure.

• Non-penetrating surgery may yield less satisfactory results in Asian eyes and modification of the technique is needed.