The effectiveness of community vs. hospital eye service follow-up for patients with neovascular age-related macular degeneration with controlled disease

Not Applicable

Completed

Conditions: Wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD)
Eye Diseases
Degeneration of macula and posterior pole

Registration Number: ISRCTN07479761

Lead Sponsor: Queen's University Belfast (UK)

Brief Summary: Not available

Detailed Description: Not available

Recruitment & Eligibility

Status: Completed

Sex: All

Target Recruitment: 96

Inclusion Criteria

Hospital ophthalmologists and community optometrists will be recruited.

Ophthalmologists and Optometrists will be contacted by email. Expressions of interest will be sought. There are no specific requirements for eligibility to participate other than willingness to attend specified training sessions and completion of a test of competency following the training session. In the event of more than the desired numbers applying to take part in the study, we will allocate participation status on a first come first served basis.

Exclusion Criteria

Inability to complete training successfully including:
1. Attendance in person or via the web for training seminars and
2. Satisfactory performance on a training set of vignettes

Study & Design

Study Type: Interventional

Study Design: Not specified

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Participant's judgement of the need for retreatment ('Lesion reactivation, referral to hospital' vs. 'Inactive lesion, optometry review in 4 weeks' or 'Suspicious lesion, optometry review with new images in 2 weeks') compared to the reference classification. <br><br>The primary outcome for the economic evaluation will be the cost per accurate retreatment decision.

Secondary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Secondary outcomes are: <br>1. Frequency of 'critical' errors judged likely to be sight-threatening, i.e. lesions that need urgent retreatment to avoid irrecoverable loss of visual acuity.<br>2. Judgements about the presence or absence of lesion components, i.e.: blood, exudates and subretinal fluid (SRF) in the fundus colour images; SRF, intra-retinal fluid/cysts and pigment epithelial detachment (PED) in the Optical coherence tomography (OCT) images.<br>3. Participant-rated confidence in the decision about the primary outcome, on a 5-point scale.