Expert: Physicians are the most important glaucoma "diagnostic imager"

ATLANTA — While diagnostic imaging tools and other glaucoma devices are effective means of diagnosing and following glaucomatous progression, the most important element in glaucoma treatment is the human one, a glaucoma expert said here.

"If you, the practitioner, do not make the [glaucoma] diagnosis with your clinical exam, simply owning these machines will not help you," Douglas J. Rhee, MD, said at the American Academy of Ophthalmology meeting. "Expensive technology has not yet reduced its variability to the point where significant clinical intervention is decided upon by anything other than IOP, visual field and/or optic nerve."

Of course, technology can be helpful, he said. Physicians should have baseline technology in their practices, including a slip lamp, gonioprism and automated perimeter, he said. However, it is not always practical to screen every patient with expensive imaging tools, nor do physicians have enough time to do so in busy practices, Dr. Rhee said.

He added that there is not yet a form of glaucoma that can only be diagnosed by technology.