Investigating the clinical validity of the guided progression analysis definition with 10–2 visual field in retinitis pigmentosa

PURPOSE: To investigate the clinical validity of the Guided Progression Analysis definition (GPAD) and cluster-based definition (CBD) with the Humphrey Field Analyzer (HFA) 10–2 test in retinitis pigmentosa (RP). METHODS: Ten non-progressive RP visual fields (VFs) (HFA 10–2 test) were simulated for each of 10 VFs of 111 eyes (10 simulations × 10 VF sequencies × 111 eyes = 111,000 VFs; Dataset 1). Using these simulated VFs, the specificity of GPAD for the detection of progression was determined. Using this dataset, similar analyses were conducted for the CBD, in which the HFA 10–2 test was divided into four quadrants. Subsequently, the Hybrid Definition was designed by combining the GPAD and CBD; various conditions of the GPAD and CBD were altered to approach a specificity of 95.0%. Subsequently, actual HFA 10–2 tests of 116 RP eyes (10 VFs each) were collected (Dataset 2), and true positive rate, true negative rate, false positive rate, and the time required to detect VF progression were evaluated and compared across the GPAD, CBD, and Hybrid Definition. RESULTS: Specificity values were 95.4% and 98.5% for GPAD and CBD, respectively. There were no significant differences in true positive rate, true negative rate, and false positive rate between the GPAD, CBD, and Hybrid Definition. The GPAD and Hybrid Definition detected progression significantly earlier than the CBD (at 4.5, 5.0, and 4.5 years, respectively). CONCLUSIONS: The GPAD and the optimized Hybrid Definition exhibited similar ability for the detection of progression, with the specificity reaching 95.4%.