From The Editors: By Paul Rosen FRCS, FRCOphth

THIS issue brings together a number of reports on glaucoma management and detection. The news from Clive Migdal MD, that the European Glaucoma Society is to publish an updated "Terminology and Guidelines for Glaucoma" incorporating evidence from a number of international clinical trials is to be welcomed.

Eve Higginbotham’s guest editorial on compliance deals with the perennial problem of why patients don’t use their eye drops regularly. How often and when do your patients use their treatment? For example, I’m always fastidious about telling my patients who are on twice daily medication, to instil them “twelve hourly”. I notice that many patients however are on "bd" regimes.

Last week I asked a patient at what time he was using his bd Timolol and he replied at 1.00pm and 4.00pm! Where patients keep their drops is also important. Those on once “nightly” medication are best keeping their drops either “next to their bed” or “next to their toothbrush.” Patients on latanoprost are often confused about the instructions for long term storage in the refrigerator.

Instructions, however, state that once opened there is no need for refrigeration and therefore patients on this “once nightly” medication may keep their drops next to their bed. Seeing their eye drop bottle as they “get into bed” reminds them to instil their eye drops and improves compliance. There is an additional discussion on the effects of patient non-compliance on the progress of the disease in the insert in this magazine sponsored by Pharmacia.

In this issue you will find details of a request to compile a reader satisfaction survey “on our website”. Please give us 15 minutes of your time to complete this questionnaire. For every reply the ESCRS will make a donation to UNICEF. The answers will help us make an ‘almost perfect’ publication ‘perfect’.

Why do I feel EuroTimes is ‘almost perfect’? because every time I ask for correspondence or criticism of articles/editorials I receive none. Remember that any opinion you send to us for publication will be distributed in 21,000 copies and read by an estimated 60,000 people in 62 countries.

Although EuroTimes is a monthly “throw away” magazine it is archived ‘on the net’ and opinions expressed in its pages are accessible to present and future generations as a representation of contemporary ophthalmology. Please let us have your views as well as our own.

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