Impact on the ocular surface of some glaucoma drugs

Purpose: To compare the impact on the ocular surface of glaucomatous patients under monotherapy by latanoprost, tafluprost, bimatoprost and bimatoprost/timolol 0.50% fixed combination. Patients and Methods: This is a single center, clinical and epidemiological study. Fourty glaucomatous patients (20 males; 20 females), age and sex-matched were divided in four groups according to monotherapy (latanoprost 0.005%, tafluprost 0.0015%, bimatoprost 0.03% and bimatoprost 0.03%/timolol 0.50% fixed combination). All of these patients had at least three months follow-up and were under tonometric control. All of these patients were categorized according to a new algorithm to classify the clinical and familiar risk factors. All of them received OSDI and NEI-VFQ-25 questionnaires to evaluate their quality of life under monotherapy. The statistical analysis was performed by Student’s t-test as for demographical data and one-way ANOVA as for the questionnaires results. P<0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: All the glaucomatous patients answered their questionnaires. According to the different groups, latanoprost group had a p=0.302, tafluprost group p=0.381, bimatoprost/timolol 0.50% fixed combination p=0.141 and bimatoprost group p=0.000. Conclusions: All the glaucomatous patients completed this study. The Author hypothesizes that the bimatoprost group is the only statistical significant because bimatoprost is a drug usually prescribed in advanced glaucomatous patients, where the clinical picture and the ocular surface are usually more damaged than in the early stage of glaucoma disease.