The place for HRT3 in screening and glaucoma management

Dr. Nicolela discussed the topic of monitoring glaucoma progression, which he views as the greatest advantage of HRT3 technology, and is the focus of his work at Dalhousie University. Optic disc photographs are currently considered the gold standard for glaucoma monitoring in every guideline, including the recently published Canadian guidelines, comprising baseline disc photographs and serial photographs afterwards. The reality, however, is that these are generally not properly used, and yield only poor to moderate agreement, even among expert observers. As a result, the industry gold standard is not ideal. When one examines practice surveys one observes that disc photographs are made in, at best, 50% of glaucoma cases. Furthermore, Dr. Nicolela expressed the notion that very few cases are reviewed by the physician at each subsequent patient visit. Dr. Nicolela views glaucoma monitoring technology as the most important -and complicated -task relating to the treatment of this disease. The question at hand is, "Can automated devices help practitioners?" Clearly, HRT has long been a key component in glaucoma monitoring, Dr. Nicolela expressed the notion that while it does not represent the ideal, the device does offer practitioners tools that assist in determining whether or not an optic disc is changing over time.