When deciding which technology is best to detect glaucoma defects in myopia patients, a new study in the American Journal of Ophthalmology suggests swept-source OCT (SS-OCT) may be more accurate and have greater diagnostic accuracy in primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG) than spectral-domain OCT (SD-OCT). The team of researchers attributes their finding to SS-OCT's wider scan and measurement area.

The prospective, case-control study included 150 myopic POAG eyes and 100 healthy myopia-only eyes that underwent SD-OCT and SS-OCT in random order on the same day. The investigators rated the locations of glaucomatous defects on both SD-OCT and SS-OCT maps, and compared the maps’ accuracies.

The investigators found the SS-OCT wide-field RNFL thickness maps showed the best accuracy for glaucomatous defect in the inferotemporal (96.4%) and superotemporal (92.4%) regions. The instrument’s RNFL/GCL++/GCL+ wide-field thickness map showed better accuracy for glaucomatous defect in both the superotemporal and inferotemporal regions compared with the SD-OCT thickness map. Additionally, the average GCL++ (87.6%) and GCL+ (87.5%) thicknesses were significantly more accurate for myopic POAG compared with GCIPL thickness from SD-OCT (83.8%).

“It is certainly worth taking advantage of this new technology for accurate diagnosis of POAG and prevention of unnecessary glaucoma treatment in healthy myopic eyes,” the researchers wrote in their paper.