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Jennifer L. Stone, OD; Alan L. Robin, MD; Gary D. Novack, PhD; David W. Covert, MBA; Gerald D. Cagle, PhD

Arch Ophthalmol. 2009;127(6):732-736.

Objectives  To evaluate the performance of patients with ocular hypertension and glaucoma who are experienced in the instillation of topical ocular hypotensive medications.

Methods  We conducted a prospective, open-label study at a single private practice site. We enrolled 139 patients with a diagnosis of glaucoma or ocular hypertension who used 1 or more topical ocular hypotensive medications for at least 6 months and who instilled their own medications. Patients were questioned regarding their use of topical ocular hypotensive medications, and we used a video recording to evaluate patient performance of eyedrop instillation with 2 bottle designs.

Results  Patients reported relatively good performance on eyedrop instillation. One hundred twenty-nine of 139 patients (92.8%) reported no problem putting in their eyedrops, and 86 of 139 (61.9%) believed that they never missed their eye when administering the drops. The proportions of patients who were able to instill a single drop into the eye without touching the bottle to the eye were 14 of 64 (21.9%) with a 15-mL bottle and 36 of 117 (30.8%) with a 2.5-mL bottle.

Conclusions  Under a single direct observation, patients experienced in the use of topical ocular hypotensive agents performed relatively poorly when instilling a single eyedrop into the eye without touching the bottle tip to the eye or the ocular adnexae.

Trial Registration  clinicaltrials.gov Identifier: NCT00522600

Author Affiliations: Glaucoma Specialists (Dr Stone) and Wilmer Eye Institute, The Johns Hopkins University (Dr Robin), Baltimore, Maryland; Pharma•Logic Development, Inc, San Rafael, California (Dr Novack); and Alcon Research, Ltd, Fort Worth, Texas (Mr Covert and Dr Cagle).

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