We previously reported that it was beneficial to apply binomial pointwise linear regression (PLR) to detect 24-2 glaucomatous visual field (VF) progression, compared to mean deviation (MD) trend analysis and permutation analysis of PLR (PoPLR). The purpose of the current study was to validate the usefulness of the binomial PLR method to detect VF progression in the central 10 degrees in glaucoma patients.

Reliability assessment.

A series of 15 VFs (Humphrey Field Analyzer 10-2 SITA-standard) from 97 eyes in 69 primary open-angle glaucoma patients, obtained over 8.5 ± 1.3 years (mean ± SD), were investigated. PLR was performed by regressing the total deviation of all test points on the series of 15 VFs. VF progression was determined from the analyses of VF test points using the binomial test (1-sided, P < .025). The time needed to detect VF progression was also investigated. The results were compared with PoPLR and MD trend analyses.

The binomial PLR was comparable to PoPLR and MD trend analyses in the positive predictive value (0.19 to 0.80), the negative predictive value (0.86 to 1.0), and the false positive rate (0.0 to 0.13) to evaluate glaucomatous VF progression. The time needed to detect VF progression (4.2 ± 1.8 years) was significantly shorter with the binomial PLR method compared with PoPLR and MD trend analysis (P = .04, P = .012, respectively).

The binomial PLR method detected glaucomatous VF progression in the central 10 degrees significantly earlier than PoPLR and MD trend analyses.