Abstract
Purpose:
To evaluate the role of aqueous flare in pseudophakic eyes with cystoid macular edema (CME) and its relationship to best corrected visual acuity (BCVA) and retinal thickness.
Methods:
30 pseudophakic eyes with clinically significant CME as well as 46 healthy pseudophakic eyes and 97 healthy phakic eyes as controls were enrolled in this study. BCVA, aqueous flare measurements with a laser flare-cell meter (Kowa FM-500, Kowa Co. Ltd, Tokyo, Japan) and spectral domain optical coherence tomography (SDOCT) volume scans were collected. Foveal central thickness (FCT) was assessed using custom software.
Results:
Pseudophakic eyes with CME showed significantly higher flare values than healthy pseudophakic eyes (p<0.0001; median, 22.55 vs. 11.00 photon counts per millisecond (pc/ms)) and phakic eyes (p< 0.0001; median, 22.55 vs. 3.52 pc/ms). There was also a significant difference of flare values between pseudophakic and phakic healthy eyes (p<0.0001; median, 11.00 vs. 3.52 pc/ms). Among pseudophakic eyes, higher flare values correlated significantly with lower BCVA (p= 0.041). Higher flare values also correlated with higher FCT (p<0.0001) in the pseudophakic group.
Conclusions:
Analysis of aqueous flare values revealed significant differences between eyes with clinically significant CME and healthy controls indicating higher inflammation levels in the anterior chamber of affected eyes.
Keywords: 585 macula/fovea •
557 inflammation