RAPID

• Research type

  Research Study

• Full title

  Assessing the Effectiveness of Imaging Technology to Rapidly Detect Disease Progression in Glaucoma: ‘stable data’ collection.

• IRAS ID

  137122

• Contact name

  David Garway-Heath

• Sponsor organisation

  Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust

• Research summary

  A person sees their surroundings when images formed at the back of the eye are transmitted to the brain by nerve fibres in the optic nerve. Glaucoma is a condition that results from the loss of these nerve fibres. This leads to the loss of vision, usually off-centre (peripheral). The vision loss is monitored by visual field examination. Monitoring is required to ensure that treatments are effective in preventing further loss of vision.

  The visual field test results vary a lot from one occasion to another, even if no real change has occurred. Therefore tests need to be repeated, sometimes frequently, over a long period of time to identify a consistent trend. To address the problem of test result variability, we wish to investigate whether imaging technology, called Optical coherence tomography (OCT), can help doctors detect worsening glaucoma. OCT provides images of the nerve fibres at the back of the eye. As the number of nerve fibres is related to the sensitivity of the eye, we believe that measurements made from the images may make the assessment of the visual field more accurate. Combining the images and visual field tests may enable doctors to identify worsening glaucoma more quickly and with fewer visual field tests.

  We will investigate data already acquired from a large cohort of patients with glaucoma from the UK Glaucoma Treatment Study (UKGTS) together with newly-acquired data from a ’Stable Glaucoma’ cohort to act as a reference set.

• REC name

  North of Scotland Research Ethics Committee 2

• REC reference

  13/NS/0132

• Date of REC Opinion

  27 Sep 2013

• REC opinion

  Further Information Favourable Opinion