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A survey of attitudes of glaucoma subspecialists in England and Wales to visual field test intervals in relation to NICE guidelines

Malik, R; Baker, H; Russell, RA; Crabb, DP; (2013) A survey of attitudes of glaucoma subspecialists in England and Wales to visual field test intervals in relation to NICE guidelines. BMJ Open , 3 (5) , Article e002067. 10.1136/bmjopen-2012-002067. Green open access

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Abstract

Objectives: To establish the attitudes of glaucoma specialists to the frequency of visual field (VF) testing in the UK, using the NICE recommendations as a standard for ideal practice. / Design: Interview and postal survey. / Setting: UK and Eire Glaucoma Society national meeting 2011 in Manchester, UK, with a second round of surveys administered by post. / Participants: All consultant glaucoma specialists in England and Wales were invited to complete the survey. / Primary and secondary outcome measures: (1) Compliance of assigned follow-up VF intervals with NICE guidelines for three hypothetical patient scenarios, with satisfactory treated intraocular pressure and (a) no evidence of VF progression; (b) evidence of VF progression and (c) uncertainty about VF progression, and respondents were asked to provide typical follow-up intervals representative of their practice; (2) attitudes to research recommendations for six VF in the first 2 years for newly diagnosed patients with glaucoma. / Results: 70 glaucoma specialists completed the survey. For each of the clinical scenarios a, b and c, 14 (20%), 33 (47%) and 28 (40%) responses, respectively, fell outside the follow-up interval recommended by NICE. Nearly half of the specialists (46%) agreed that 6 VF tests in the first 2 years was ideal practice, while 16 (28%) said this was practice ‘not possible’, with many giving resources within the NHS setting as a limiting factor. / Conclusions: The results from this survey suggest that there is a large variation in attitudes to follow-up intervals for patients with glaucoma in the UK, with assigned intervals for VF testing which are, in many cases, inconsistent with the guidelines from NICE.

Type: Article
Title: A survey of attitudes of glaucoma subspecialists in England and Wales to visual field test intervals in relation to NICE guidelines
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1136/bmjopen-2012-002067
Publisher version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2012-002067
Language: English
Additional information: This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial License, which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non commercial and is otherwise in compliance with the license. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ and http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/legalcode.
Keywords: science & technology, life sciences & biomedicine, medicine, general & internal, general & internal medicine, progression detection, frequency
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Institute of Ophthalmology
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1530922
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