OBJECTIVES: Very little is known about patient characteristics, treatment patterns and outcomes of contemporary patients with glaucomatous disease in the UK. We invited ophthalmology centers who are users of a uniformly structured electronic medical record (EMR) system (Medisoft, Leeds UK) to establish a real-world evidence platform in glaucoma.

METHODS: EMR data, including visual field (VF) examination results, were collected from patient eyes with glaucomatous diseases at 6 centers in the UK. Patient eyes were included if a diagnosis code of primary open angle glaucoma (POAG), ocular hypertension (OHT) only and suspected glaucoma (SG) only was present. Incident eyes were free of disease modifying treatment and had ≤3 VF measurements collected in a 24-months period prior to first diagnosis, once the EMR was classified as well established (i.e. ≥1yr after implementation). We present summary statistics on intraocular pressure (IOP) at index date (±6 months).

RESULTS: Six clinics contributed 63,376 unique patients and 119,294 eyes (52% females in both), among which a POAG, OHT or SG diagnosis was recorded 31,890, 32,507 and 30,398 times, respectively. Overall, 21,601 eyes were included in the POAG cohort with 17,964 and 14,860 in the SG only and OHT only cohorts, respectively. At index the mean IOPs (Goldmann applanation tonometry) were 18 mmHg (SD 6), 22 mmHg (SD 5) and 18 mmHg (SD 4) for POAG, OHT and SG patients respectively. Mean IOP values for eyes with incident diagnoses were 20.1 (SD 6.7) for POAG, 23.5 (SD 4.3) for OHT, and 17.8 (SD 4.3) for SG, and 17.3 (SD 5.3), 20.8 (SD 5.1) and 17.2 (SD 4.1) for non-incident patients, respectively.

CONCLUSIONS:

Structured EMR systems can greatly facilitate real-world ophthalmology studies on a much larger scale than single center studies. We expect further unique evidence on clinical practice and treatment patterns from the platform.