Abstract
Purpose:
Investigate possible differences in trabecular meshwork length among different racial groups.
Methods:
We performed ocular coherence tomography (OCT) scans on 326 patients from an ophthalmology clinic at the University of California San Francisco. Only eyes without any previous surgeries were selected. Races included in the study were White, African American, Chinese and Hispanics. Scans were performed with Cirrus OCT from Zeiss using the anterior segment 5 line raster protocol. Patients had to fixate at an external light so that the nasal portion of the eye would be centered for the scan. Scans were done over the limbus area showing the area of the scleral spur. Images were analyzed and trabecular meshwork length was measured from the scleral spur to the endothelium line using imageJ software. We excluded 34 scans due to poor image quality.
Results:
Final sample had 292 eyes composed of 37.4% Whites, 13.0% African Americans, 36.6% Chinese and 13.0% Hispanics. The mean trabecular meshwork length was 839μm (SD=129). Range was 531μm to 1325μm. Chinese and Whites had the longest mean trabecular length 860μm (SD=130) and 849μm (SD=126), respectively; Hispanics had 819μm (SD=150) and African Americans had the shortest length of 772 μm (SD=118). After comparing the means using oneway ANOVA with Bonferroni correction, the means for Whites and Chinese were statistically different when compared to African Americans (p=0.029 and p=0.009). The mean trabecular length value for Hispanics was not statistically different then the other groups.
Conclusions:
Our study shows that there is a difference in trabecular meshwork length among racial groups and may provide some insight into the different glaucoma distribution among racial groups.
Keywords: 550 imaging/image analysis: clinical •
735 trabecular meshwork •
421 anterior segment