[Monitoring of patients with primary chronic open-angle glaucoma]

Compliance to examinations performed in a specialised department was studied in patients with chronic open-angle glaucoma. A total of 429 case reports from patients treated from 1974 to 1977 were analyzed, follow up being for a period of up to 7 years. Examinations were performed two or three times a year and any patient who didn't return for two consecutive years was considered as lost. The number of lost patients was very few, about 10 percent a year, and this did not increase during the whole follow-up period. Overall, compliance was not related to sex. However, a higher proportion of women were lost between the second and third year of follow up. The distance between patient's homes and the medical center, near or far away, was not significant. As expected, a higher proportion of patients over sixty were lost after one year of follow up.