Abstract
Purpose:
Lipemia retinalis is a rare condition where the retinal arteries and veins are dilated and milky white in color, sometimes making it difficult to differentiate between them except for the width of the vessel. This is usually seen with high levels of triglycerides. There has been no spectral-domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) reports in eyes with lipemia retinalis. This study describes the SD-OCT and fundus autofluorescence findings of a series of 2 patients with clinical lipemia retinalis.
Methods:
This was a retrospective chart review of two patients who were clinically diagnosed as having lipemia retinalis. They underwent fundus examination, color fundus photographs (Zeiss), SD-OCT, FAF, red-free and infrared (all Spectralis, Heidelberg Engineering) pictures of the retina.
Results:
As was evident clinically, both arteries and veins were dilated on macular OCT scans. The vessels were "vertically oval", expanding not only in the x-y plane but also the z-axis. This was observed throughout in the first, second and third order vessels. The dilation, as seen on SD-OCT scans, were more exaggerated in the scan than apparent on clinical fundus photographs. There were no cystic spaces seen in the retina.
Conclusions:
The interesting finding was the presence of 'vertically oval' vessels, as seen on OCT scans. The z-axis displayed about 1.5 times more vessel dilation than the x-y plane. This is probably because of the ease with which the vessels can expand vertically into the inner plexiform layers that have vertically-oriented cells.
Keywords: 688 retina •
583 lipids •
552 imaging methods (CT, FA, ICG, MRI, OCT, RTA, SLO, ultrasound)