A patient patient with long history of bilateral glaucoma

[Enquirer1]

Hello there ,

My name is Will. I am approaching my 80th birthday and I am in generally good health. I had bilateral open angle glaucoma which was diagnosed 33 years ago. I take two types of eye drops regularly and attend a specialist clinic every 6 months for follow up.

I also attend Specsavers to have a visual field-test requested by DVLA to have my driving licence renewed each year.

Having failed the initial tests many years ago, I have passed every single test since then, whether carried out using Henson 9000 or Humphry's Zeiss HFA A3 830.

So far so good.

My visual fields tests when done at the special eye clinic have shown improvement rather than deterioration (against the accepted wisdom!) when measured by Mean Deviation, Patter Standard Deviation and the progression index: Visual Field Index.

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Replies

[Astilbe]

Thanks for that Enquirer1, that is interesting. Do you take any supplements or have any advice which you feel has helped you?

[Enquirer1 in reply to Astilbe]

Yes. I take iron supplements with Vitamin B12 and B6 but that's mainly because I am 90% vegetarian! I try to keep healthy with daily exercise and healthy food, etc. I have never smoked and only drink occasionally.

[Anonoms]

I think your vfi can get better as you as you get older because the formula calculating it matches it against the general population who also have declining eyesight. I think you will find it is also does in decades ...so when you are 80 you will be in the same group as 89 year olds so you might technically appear to be better than you are. Complicated. Maybe someone else will be able to explain better

[Enquirer1 in reply to Anonoms]

Thanks for your reply. You are quite right: the Mean Deviation is a measure of comparison of your performance against the same age group. In other words, how much your vision deviates from the normal! But this group of people were selected for the test because they have "Normal" vision in spite of their age. There may be slight deterioration in the overall acuity only.