Abstract
Purpose:
To study whether peripapillary and subfoveal choroidal thicknesses of NA-AION patients is normal or not.
Methods:
The study involved 44 unilateral NA-AION patients (23 men and 21 women), whose mean age was 50.84±9.95 years (mean±SD), and 60 normal subjects (60 eyes) with similar age (50.30±1.18 years) and diopter. The patients were divided into two groups: 19 patients with optic disc edema in group 1 and 25 patients with optic disc edema resolution in group 2. Peripapillary and subfoveal choroidal thicknesses in all the eyes studied were measured by enhanced depth imaging Heiderberg Spectralis optic coherence tomography (EDI-OCT, Heidelberg engineering, Software Version:5.3.2). Peripapillary choroidal thickness was measured at the nasal superior (NS), nasal (N), nasal inferior (NI), temporal inferior (TI), temporal (T) and temporal superior (TS) segments. Choroidal thicknesses in the suffering eyes and the unaffected fellow eyes of the patients were compared with that of normal subjects. Choroidal thicknesses of the patients in Group 1 and Group 2 were also compared. The correlation between choroidal thickness and retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL) thickness, logMAR visual acuity (logMAR VA), and the mean defection (MD) of Humphrey static perimetry (24-2) in the NA-AION suffering eyes were analyzed.
Results:
It was only found that peripapillary choroidal thickness at the nasal, nasal inferior and temporal inferior segments in the suffering eyes in group 1 were significantly thicker than that of normal subjects (P<0.05). We found no difference in choroidal thickness (1) between the suffering eyes and the unaffected fellow eyes of the NA-AION patients, (2) between the unaffected fellow eye of the NA-AION patients and normal eyes of healthy subjects, (3) between group 1 and group 2 (all P>0.05). There were no correlations between choroidal thickness and RNFL thickness in both two groups (all P>0.05). Neither logMAR VA nor MD correlated with choroidal thickness in the eyes affected by NA-AION (all P>0.05).
Conclusions:
Although peripapillary choroidal thickness in some segments become thicker in the eyes with optic disc edema caused by NA-AION, there are no evidences to prove that choroidal thickness is abnormal in NA-AION compared with normal subjects with similar age and diopter.