Effective treatment for OAG is to reduce the IOP, with medical therapy being the typical first-line therapy. Alternative therapy is SLT, which is safe as it is effective in lowering the IOP. Whether SLT could replace medication as the first-line therapy for OAG is still doubtful. This study was done to examine and compare both treatment methods.
Studies involving randomized controlled trials conducted that compared the efficacy of SLT-related and medication-only treatments for OAG were selected from PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, and Web of Science.GRADE methodology was employed to rate the quality of the body of evidence.
A total of 1229 patients in 8 trials were included. No significant differences between SLT-related and medication-only treatments regarding the IOP reduction and the success rate of IOP control were observed. The SLT-related therapy group required significantly fewer medications compared with the medication-only group. A quantitative analysis was not performed concerning adverse events and quality of life because of the limited data available.
The study concluded through its findings that SLT is safe and has a lower incidence of ocular side effects. SLT can be the choice of first-line therapy for OAG.
Reference: https://bjo.bmj.com/content/104/11/1500
