PURPOSE: To provide an overview of some of the current activities in eye research in the Nordic countries.METHODS: The presentations at the biannual Nordic Congress of Ophthalmology, held in Tampere, Finland in 2002, were reviewed and the contributions found most noteworthy are included in this article along with a limited discussion of each research field. However, space requirements prevented th

AIMS/BACKGROUND: Increased retinopathy progression has been reported after cataract surgery in patients with diabetes mellitus. To assess the influence of cataract surgery on visual acuity and retinopathy progression, all diabetic patients who were subjected to cataract surgery during 1991-3 have been followed up at the Department of Ophthalmology in Helsingborg. The average follow up time was 2 y

The effect of panretinal laser scatter treatment on visual fields, visual acuity and subjective complaints was assessed in 11 patients with severe nonproliferative or early proliferative diabetic retinopathy. Patients were prospectively examined before and after panretinal treatment using automated static threshold perimetry with program 30-2 on the Humphrey perimeter, and they were interviewed. V

Available studies on visual field disturbances in diabetic retinopathy have shown conflicting results, obtained with different and often non-comparable techniques. We have studied visual fields at different stages of diabetic retinopathy with modern sensitive computerized technique taking precautions to limit disturbing effects of random field variation and lack of perimetric experience. Sixty-thr

Eighty-three patients with high risk ocular hypertension were followed between 9 and 120 months with computerized threshold perimetry every three months in a prospective clinical study. Twenty eyes developed definite glaucomatous visual field defects. Analysis of these cases showed that definite field loss was preceded by increased variability of measured threshold values. Already at this early st

The use of computer-assisted instruction in medical education has increased steadily in the last decade with the availability of personal computers. Many computer-assisted instruction programs train the user to handle various forms of disease or injury. Our intent was to provide medical students with more experience in managing ophthalmological emergencies, and we therefore designed a computerized

Typical glaucomatous visual field defects are often contiguous areas of diminished differential light sensitivity presenting as clusters of abnormally depressed points in the visual field chart. We investigated the value of recognizing arcuate cluster patterns, corresponding to the anatomy of the normal retinal nerve fiber layer. Cluster sizes were quantified using cluster volume and surface area.

We studied the influence of optic disc diameter on the diagnostic power of subjective disc evaluation of glaucoma. One hundred and thirteen colour disc photographs of 91 patients with primary open angle glaucoma and 174 photographs of 89 randomly selected normal subjects were studied. Five ophthalmologists independently classified all eyes as glaucomatous or normal by disc appearance using a maske

Interpretation of numeric automated threshold visual field results is often difficult. A large amount of data is obtained for every single field tested. Various approaches to summarize this data have been suggested, most commonly the mean and standard deviation of departures from age-corrected normal threshold values. These visual field indices differ substantially from subjective field interpreta

This was a double-masked prospective study of the effect on patients with ocular hypertension and other risk factors for glaucomatous damage of intraocular pressure reduction achieved with topical timolol.

In recent years several aids for automated interpretation of visual field data have been suggested. We believed that incorporation of thorough knowledge of normal visual field variability would allow improvements in the performance of such aids since more attention would be paid to field results in areas with low physiological variability. Two visual field models for classification of fields in gl