Establishing new OCT parameters: Is race‐specific phenotyping necessary?

Summary Establishing phenotypes of the normal optic nerve head via normative databases is vitally important for clinicians. Attributing likelihoods for glaucoma based on single OCT examinations helps clinicians triage and assign resources for further or more intensive testing. It is recognized that significant race‐specific differences in optic nerve head parameters exist, however, it their utility has not improved diagnostics. One reason could be that these databases have thus far used only conventional parameters that do not exploit measurements now possible to characterize neuroretinal rim parameters that are anatomically and geometrically accurate, or the deep optic nerve head. This presentation will review the literature on race‐specific databases, postulate reasons for their inability to yield better diagnostics and present new alternative race‐specific OCT data that may enhance clinical glaucoma practice.