The Frontloading Fields Study: The Impact of False Positives and Seeding Point Errors on Visual Field Reliability...

Area of Science:

• Ophthalmology
• Visual Science
• Medical Diagnostics

Background:

• Assessing visual field (VF) reliability is crucial for accurate glaucoma diagnosis and monitoring.
• Conventional criteria like false positives (FP) and seeding point errors (SPE) are used to determine VF result reliability.
• The impact of low sensitivity points on VF reliability assessments requires further investigation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the impact of FP and SPE criteria on intrasession SITA-Faster VF result correlations.
• To assess the concurrent effect of low sensitivity points (≤19 dB) on VF reliability.
• To determine if censoring low sensitivity results improves VF correlation.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of 2320 intrasession SITA-Faster VF results from 1160 eyes.
• Categorization of results into 'both reliable' and 'reliable-unreliable' pairs.
• Evaluation of VF results against FP rates and SPE, with and without censoring sensitivity results ≤19 dB.
• Use of segmental linear regression to identify critical FP levels.

Main Results:

• A small increase in mean deviation (0.09 dB per 1% exceeding 12%) and sensitivity increase locations was observed with higher FP rates.
• SPEs primarily affected primary seeding points, with minimal impact on other VF indices.
• Censoring sensitivity results ≤19 dB significantly improved the correlation between reliable and unreliable VF results.

Conclusions:

• Current FP (>15%) and SPE criteria may lead to the erroneous exclusion of valid VF data.
• Censoring low sensitivity results (≤19 dB) enhances intrasession VF result correlations.
• Guidelines are provided for interpreting the impact of FP, SPE, and low sensitivity on VF analysis.