Reliability of echographic examination for the study of optic nerve cupping

• Autor(a) principal: Tongu,M.T.S
• Data de Publicação: 1999
• Outros Autores: Borges,M.J.H, Giovedi,M.R.A, Cohen,R, Almeida,G.V
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Arquivos brasileiros de oftalmologia (Online)
• Texto Completo: http://old.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0004-27491999000300265
• topic: Ophthalmic ultrasound; Optic nerve cupping; Glaucoma

SUMMARY Purpose: To investigate the reliability and applicability of echography to detect optic nerve cupping smaller than or equal to 0.3 and greater than or equal to 0.9. Patients and Method: Fifty-three eyes from 30 patients, with transparent optic media, underwent contact B-scan echography to evaluate optic disc cupping. On biomicroscopy, twenty-six eyes presented small (Group 1) and 27 large (Group II) optic nerve cupping. Results: B-scan images of the optic disc were evaluated by two observers and ocular echography was considered reliable with a Kappa index of 0.77 (± 0.14). Sensitivity and specificity were 71.4% (53.4 - 81.1) and 96.2% (78.4 - 99.8), respectively, with a confidence interval of 95 % •The positive and negative predictive values found for the sample were 95.2 % (74.1 - 99.8) and 78.1 % (59.6 - 90.1), respectively. Conclusion: Echography is a reliable method to evaluate optic disc cupping when s; 0.3 and > 0.9. However, as a screening method it would be more important in the case of negative results.