Medical treatment: Treated vs. untreated glaucoma and ocular hypertension

Abstract

Understanding the natural history of chronic disease is difficult, and for ethical reasons it is particularly difficult to study the natural history of an untreated disease for which beneficial treatment is available. The study design that is most amenable to assessing the natural history of a chronic disease is an observational cohort study. However, because of the large number of subjects and long time duration needed to obtain the answer of interest, conducting these studies may not be feasible. Data from other study designs are typically used to infer the natural history of chronic diseases. Such is the case with open angle glaucoma (OAG). © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.