Objective: The purpose of this report is to examine the differences at baseline in demographic, medical, and ophthalmic characteristics between blacks and whites enrolled in the Advanced Glaucoma Intervention Study (AGIS), a multicenter, randomized, clinical trial.
Design: Multicenter, randomized, controlled trial.
Participants: A total of 332 black patients (451 eyes), 249 white patients (325 eyes), and 10 patients of other races (13 eyes) with open-angle glaucoma that could not be controlled by medical therapy alone participated.
Intervention: There was no intervention performed.
Methods: The investigators compare the baseline demographic, medical, and ophthalmic characteristics of black and white patients, adjusting the comparisons for age and gender.
Results: Blacks in the study were younger than whites and had more systemic hypertension and diabetes than whites. The visual field defects of blacks on average were substantially more severe than those of whites. Intraocular pressures and visual acuity scores were similar in the two groups. Blacks were more hyperopic and had relatively fewer disk rim hemorrhages than whites.
Conclusions: The findings of the current study concur with those of previous clinical studies of open-angle glaucoma that visual field defects are more severe in blacks than whites.