Abstract

Great efforts have been made over the past decades to find a direct objective measure of retinal damage in glaucoma and optic atrophy. The electroretinogram (ERG) was considered a prime candidate for such a measure, but so far, reliable ERG tests for inner retinal and specifically ganglion cell function are still not available in the clinic. Numerous scientific studies have reported glaucomatous changes in the pattern ERG, but even now many findings remain controversial. Often, the changes reported were significant within a group but not large enough to permit a diagnosis on individual patients. The problem with such applications of traditional ERG techniques is two-fold: 1) They test retinal performance with large stimuli and are, therefore, relatively insensitive to local damage encountered in the early stages of disease. 2) Most of the response originates from the distal retina. Local changes of the small inner retinal contribution are too small to detect in the presence of a large outer retinal component with its own inter-subject variabilities.

© 1995 Optical Society of America