Cerebral Infarct and Visual Field Progression
July’s Ophthalmology

Previous studies have linked silent cerebral infarct (SCI) with the presence of normal-tension glaucoma (NTG). Leung et al. take these findings a step further, providing evidence that SCI may also play a role in visual field progression.This study involved 286 eyes from 286 patients with NTG; 64 of whom had SCI and 222 who did not. They were followed every four months for 36 months for visual field progression. The researchers found that SCI was present in 29.6 percent of patients with progressive changes in visual field vs. 15.3 percent of field-stable patients. Cox proportional hazards regression analysis showed that disc hemorrhage, systemic hypertension and central corneal thickness were associated with field progression. The most common location of SCI was at the basal ganglia. After adjusting for other risk factors, NTG patients with SCI had a 61-percent higher chance of visual field progression compared to those without SCI.The researchers call for further studies on the relation of SCI and visual field progression.