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Zeiss intends to add GDx to its diagnostic arsenal
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NEW ORLEANS — Days before the American Academy of Ophthalmology meeting, Carl Zeiss Meditec announced its intention to purchase Laser Diagnostic Technologies. If the deal is completed, a Zeiss official said it is hoped that the purchase of LDT’s GDx glaucoma diagnostic technology will add to the strength and depth of the Zeiss glaucoma diagnostic line.
“With no arrogance, in functional and structural evaluation and management of glaucoma, we have the portfolio from beginning to end,” said Jim Taylor, president and chief executive officer of Carl Zeiss Meditec Inc. He spoke to Ocular Surgery News at the AAO meeting regarding the strategy behind his company’s pending addition of LDT’s GDx technology to its lineup.
For functional glaucoma testing, Zeiss offers a complete line of autoperimetry devices including the Humphrey FDT Visual Field Instrument and the Humphrey Field Analyzer II, which was upgraded last year with progression analysis software and this year with the Swedish Interactive Test Algorithm for Short Wavelength Automated Perimetry (SITA-SWAP). On the structural side, the company manufactures the Stratus OCT diagnostic device for optical coherence tomography of the posterior segment.
“We do believe that the retinal nerve fiber layer is where the action is in terms of change and progression of glaucoma and detection of glaucoma. Both these devices [Stratus OCT and GDx] look at the nerve fiber layer but look at it differently,” Mr. Taylor said. “It is possible that in certain patients OCT will pick up things earlier than GDx, and in other patients GDx may pick it up earlier.”
Zeiss is not looking at the two options — GDx and Stratus OCT — as a “low-cost/high-cost alternative,” Mr. Taylor said. Rather, he noted, the ophthalmologist can make a choice based upon the needs of his or her own practice.
Aside from the financial and business impact the acquisition would have, Mr. Taylor said, Zeiss looked at the addition of LDT’s technology from the clinician’s perspective.
“We had to decide from a clinical standpoint whether the products were complementary as opposed to competitive; whether together they were better in our portfolio than individually,” Mr. Taylor said. “I think we have convinced ourselves of that.”
Zeiss will be looking at the possibility of combining the structural and functional test results in the attempt to provide more valuable diagnostics, according to Mr. Taylor. “Not making them necessarily the same product, but taking a look at the outputs and figuring out how they can be used together for better clarity in the overall diagnosis,” he said.
Zeiss will continue to invest in both technologies because both have a place in glaucoma diagnosis, Mr. Taylor said. “Both need investment and evolution, and we are excited about doing it,” he said.
The purchase of LDT by Zeiss is expected to close by the end of 2004, providing shareholders for both groups approve, according to a joint press release from the two companies. Financial terms were not disclosed at the time of the announcement.