Abstract
Purpose:
To characterize the acute, subacute, and chronic optical coherence tomography (OCT) findings of retinal arterial occlusion (RAO) to simplify the identification and staging of these cases.
Methods:
Retrospective review of charts, and OCT images and measurements of patients diagnosed with retinal artery occlusion with comparison to uninvolved fellow eyes.
Results:
Three distinct phases of OCT changes were seen. Patients in the acute phase with clinically evident inner retinal edema and opacification demonstrated a featureless opacity of the inner retina with loss of all layer detail and increased inner retinal thickness. This evolved into a subacute stage in which the featureless opacity gradually transformed into a speckled pattern of hyper-reflectance and a late chronic phase in which resolution of the opacity revealed loss of inner retinal volume and partial return of inner retinal organization. Of the first eleven eyes evaluated with central RAO, 5 presented with acute changes, 2 with subacute changes, and 4 with chronic changes.
Conclusions:
OCT offers a non-invasive method of confirming the diagnosis and staging of retinal arterial occlusions.
Keywords: 749 vascular occlusion/vascular occlusive disease •
688 retina •
550 imaging/image analysis: clinical