Abstract
Purpose:
To study macular retinal thickness and macular volume in moderately to late preterm (MLP) children.
Methods:
Right eyes of 50 MLP children (29 boys, 21 girls) with a mean age of 8 years were studied. Examinations were carried out on 12 small for gestational age (SGA) children (7 boys, 5 girls, mean gestational age (GA) 34±1.4 weeks; mean birth weight 1843±420 g) and on 38 born appropriate for gestational age (AGA) children (22 boys, 16 girls, mean GA 35±1.5 week; mean birth weight 2443±388 g) who served as controls. After visual acuity (VA), refraction and biometric values were obtained, imaging was accomplished using the Optical Coherence Tomography (3D-OCT 1000 Topcon). Images were analyzed using the OCT software to obtain average thickness measurements of nine sectors (central, inner superior, outer superior, inner inferior, outer inferior, inner nasal, outer nasal, inner temporal and outer temporal) and the macular volume. Mann-Whitney tests and Spearman's correlation were used to analyze the data.
Results:
The average macular thickness in the SGA group was 229±17 um compared with 246±24 um in the AGA group (p=0.057). The macular volume was 0.178±0.01 mm3 in the SGA group in comparison with 0.194±0.02 mm3 in the AGA group (p=0.025). The OCT measurements were not significantly correlated with VA, gender, GA, birth weight, or length at investigation in the AGA group, however, only gender (rho >0.755**) and total ocular axial length (rho>0.738*) were strongly correlated to the inner OCT macular regions in the SGA group. The mean difference of the central foveal thickness between the two groups was 17.69 um and ranged from 3.71 to 25.36 um in the outer eight macular subfields. The inner nasal, outer temporal, outer superior and outer nasal retinal regions were statistically thinner in the SGA group compared with the AGA group (p<0.05 in all) although a tendency towards thinning was observed in all the macular regions in the SGA group especially in girls (p=0.025).
Conclusions:
This study reports OCT retinal findings in MLP children. Not only children born very preterm, but also moderately to late prematurity, especially in children born SGA, should be taken into account when measuring retinal thicknesses and diagnosing children with diseases affecting the macula. This may have important clinical implications and will require further studies.
Keywords: 585 macula/fovea •
550 imaging/image analysis: clinical •
698 retinal development