Abstract
Purpose:
To evaluate the correlation of retinal sensitivity and subfoveal choroidal thickness of the fellow eye of patients with neovascular age-related macular degeneration (AMD)
Methods:
Patients who had neovascular AMD in one eye were invited to take part in the study. To be included, the best corrected visual acuity (BCVA) of the fellow eye (study eye) was 60 letters or better as measured with ETDRS chart. Microperimetry and fixation analysis were carried out with Nidek MP1 and Optical Coherence Topography were performed with Heidelberg Spectralis using the Enhanced Depth Imaging mode. Bivariate contour ellipse area (BCEA) was calculated using the raw data from the MP1 fixation analysis. Two independent graders manually measured the subfoveal choroidal thickness (CT), and the mean of the 2 graders were used for analysis. Pearson correlation between different variables was calculated using SPSS software
Results:
A total of 38 patients were included in the study. The mean age was 75.03 (SD 6.79) years, the mean BCVA was 76.11 (SD 7.82) letters, the mean subfoveal CT was 494 (SD 228) microns, the mean BCEA score was 924 (SD 735) and the mean microperimetry (MP) score was 10.14 (SD 4.13) dB. The BCVA positively correlates with the BCEA (p=0.009) and MP score (p=0.023). The subfoveal CT negatively correlates with age (p=0.021) (i.e. thinner choroid with increasing age) but not with BCVA (p=0.45), BCEA (p=0.43) or MP (p=0.18). MP and BCEA scores were highly correlated (p<0.0001).
Conclusions:
In the fellow eye of patients with neovascular AMD, we have previously reported that increasing drusen load and the presence of psudoreticular drusen were significantly associated with reduction of retinal sensitivity. Using the same methodology, we were not able to find correlation between subfoveal choroidal thickness and retinal sensitivity, but were able to confirm previous report that the choroidal thickness reduces with age.
Keywords: 504 drusen •
412 age-related macular degeneration •
550 imaging/image analysis: clinical