MONARCH

MONARCH stands for:  Monitoring for neovascular Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) Reactivation at Home. It was a large multicentre study funded by the the UK NIHR HTA programme. It’s was a diagnostic test accuracy study in which we aimed to estimate and compare the sensitivity and specificity of three home monitoring tests to detect active nAMD in patients previously diagnosed with nAMD. We will sought to follow participants for up to one year with, on average, 6 clinic visits.

 The three tests we’ compared ranged from low to high cost, and low to high tech. One was a paper diary in which the results of near vision tests including a modified Amsler test (KeepSight journal, KSJ, adapted for UK use) were recorded . Two were vision tests presented on an Apple iPod touch (MyVisionTrack, mVT, and Multi Bit test, MBT). Participants carried out tests weekly. We be compared the results of these test with a reference standard that consisted of clinical examination and investigations carried out as part of usual care in the NHS (‘blind’ to home monitoring results).

Full details of the study and results are available from : https://www.journalslibrary.nihr.ac.uk/hta/CYRA9912