Deficit-undamaged visual field area monitoring in glaucomatous patients with advanced perimetric damage: its usefulness.

Summary This report contains the observations of the authors on the behaviour with time of the visual field areas (VF) which appear undamaged by deficit within the perimetric findings where at the same time there is advanced glaucomatous damage. A retrospective study has been made on the records of a Humphrey perimeter 640 VFA relating to glaucomatous patients with these perimetric characteristics in whom at least 12 examinations (programme “Central 30-2 threshold test”) had been made and who, for a good part of the period of observation at least, had recorded a topographic stability of the deficits. There were found 12 series of examinations responding to the required necessities. The analysis of the findings used a method that separated from the global mean deviation (MD) that part concerning the pathological area and that referring to the “healthy” area of the visual field (VF). In 7 of the 8 cases where, at a certain point in the follow-up, there became evident a trend towards worsening, there was also a significant increase in the MD of the undamaged, which occurred before the deterioration of the “healthy” area became evident by the appearance of “probability symbols” in the “total deviation” map. In the 4 cases where there was stability with time, the MD values relating to the undamaged area of the VF were quite constant with time.