Enlargement of parapapillary atrophy in follow-up of chronic open-angle glaucoma

Purpoe To ae the frequency of an enlargement of parapapillary atrophy in follow-up of eye with open-angle glaucoma. Method Propective obervational longitudinal tudy. etting Intitutional. Patient The tudy included 978 eye (511 Caucaian ubject) with open-angle glaucoma (n = 548; including 194 eye with normal-preure glaucoma), ocular hypertenion (n = 289), or without optic nerve dieae (n = 141). Highly myopic eye with a myopic refractive error exceeding −8 diopter were excluded. Mean follow-up wa 4.5 ± 2.4 year (median, 3.8 year; range: 1.5 to 9.8 year). Obervation procedure Optic dik photograph taken annually. Main outcome meaure Two examiner compared optic dik lide for enlargement of parapapillary atrophy (zone beta) and for ign of progreive dik damage. Reult An enlargement of parapapillary beta zone wa detected in 16 eye (1.6%) after 3.9 ± 2.6 (0.6 to 9.1) year of follow-up. It wa oberved in 15 eye (2.7%) with open-angle glaucoma, 1 eye (0.3%) with ocular hypertenion, and in none of the normal eye. After excluding eye with a myopic refractive error exceeding −3 diopter, enlargement of beta zone wa ignificantly more common in eye with progreive glaucoma (5/81or 6.2%) than in eye with nonprogreive glaucoma (3/354 or 0.8%; P < .001). Concluion Parapapillary atrophy (zone beta) enlarge during follow-up of relatively few eye with chronic open-angle glaucoma. In the refractive range above −3 diopter, enlargement of beta zone occur ignificantly more frequently (P < .001) in progreive glaucoma than in nonprogreive glaucoma. In view of it low frequency, enlargement of beta zone may not be a very ueful marker for glaucoma progreion.