Comparison of the SITA Faster–a new visual field strategy with SITA Fast strategy

AIM: To compare visual field defects using the Swedish Interactive Thresholding Algorithm (SITA) Fast strategy with SITA Faster strategy, a newly developed time-saving threshold visual field strategy. METHODS: Ninety-three participants (60 glaucoma patients and 33 normal controls) were enrolled. One eye from each participant was selected randomly for the study. SITA Fast and SITA Faster were performed using the 24-2 default mode for each test. The differences of visual field defects between the two strategies were compared using the test duration, false-positive response errors, mean deviation (MD), visual field index (VFI) and the numbers of depressed test points at the significant levels of P<5%, <2%, <1%, and <0.5% in probability plots. The correlation between strategies was analyzed. The agreement between strategies was acquired by Bland-Altman analysis. RESULTS: Mean test durations were 246.0±60.9s for SITA Fast, and 156.3±46.3s for SITA Faster (P<0.001). The test duration of SITA Faster was 36.5% shorter than SITA Fast. The MD, VFI and numbers of depressed points at P<5%, <2%, <1%, and <0.5% in probability plots showed no statistically significant difference between two strategies (P>0.05). Correlation analysis showed a high correlation for MD (r=0.986, P<0.001) and VFI (r=0.986, P<0.001) between the two strategies. Bland-Altman analysis showed great agreement between the two strategies. CONCLUSION: SITA Faster, which saves considerable test time, has a great test quality comparing to SITA Fast, but may be not directly interchangeable.