AN OVERVIEW OF THE CURRENT DRUGS SCENE

Ophthalmic drugs, both diagnostic and therapeutic, play a central role in new developments in optometry, particularly as practitioners exten d their involvement in primary care. Optometrists now dilate more pati ents in routine practice, and this brings increasing concern about the risk of provoking acute closed angle glaucoma (GAG) attacks. It would seem that the risk of inducing acute CAG is far outweighed by the pot ential benefit of examining the eye through a dilated pupil. Driving d ifficulties, reported subjectively to be the result of glare, are freq uently encountered by patients after dilation, and advice from the Col lege of Optometrists is welcomed. The local anaesthetic proxymetacaine 0.5% is now marketed in the UK in preservative-free unit-dose applica tors both alone and in combination with fluorescein, and is a more com fortable alternative to existing anaesthetics in unit-dose form. The s econd half of this paper includes a summary of the background to recen t developments, as the UK profession takes its first steps towards the use of ocular therapeutic agents. Finally, some exciting new therapeu tic preparations for use in the treatment of glaucoma, allergic eye di sease, and dry eye conditions are discussed. Copyright (C) 1997 The Co llege of Optometrists. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.