Assessing the value of the water drinking test in glaucoma-a systematic review and meta-analysis

This systematic review and meta-analysis examines the relationship between intraocular pressure (IOP) parameters derived from the water drinking test (WDT) and diurnal IOP monitoring, and evaluates the reproducibility of the WDT and its association with future glaucomatous visual field (VF) loss. A literature search was performed on PubMed, EMBASE, and Cochrane Library from inception to 31 March 2023. Cohort, cross-sectional and observational studies reporting WDT results in glaucoma patients were included. Meta analysis with random-effect model was performed using "metafor" package in R version 3.2.1. 641 studies were identified on initial literature search. 38 studies (2479 subjects) were included in final analysis. Meta-analytic estimates of 5 studies (310 subjects) found strong positive correlation in peak IOP between the WDT and diurnal IOP monitoring (r = 0.92, 95% CI = 0.75, 1.08, p < 0.0001). However, there was only weak positive correlation for IOP fluctuation between both methods (r = 0.26, 95% CI = 0.06,0.47, p < 0.0001). Meta-analytic estimates of 3 studies (189 subjects) suggested a trend of the diurnal peak IOP being lower than that derived from the WDT (MD = -2.37 mmHg, 95% Limit of Agreement (LOA) =-5.58,0.84, p = 0.147). Two studies found that a higher WDT peak IOP was associated with greater future VF progression. Two studies demonstrated good reproducibility in peak IOP measurements for WDTs conducted across different days. In conclusion, there was a strong positive correlation between IOP peak measurements from the WDT and diurnal IOP monitoring in glaucoma patients. The WDT peak IOP demonstrated good reproducibility and may be associated with greater future VF progression.