Abstract
Purpose: :
to analyze the ciliary processes (CP) using ultrasound biomicroscopy (UBM) and to correlate the ciliary biometry with ophthalmic and morphometric parameters.
Methods: :
80 eyes from 40 healthy phakic Caucasian subjects were enrolled in a cross-sectional study. They were stratified by refractive error (range -4.5 diopters+6 diopters) for statistical analysis purpose. Comprehensive ophthalmic examination including best corrected distance/near visual acuity and spherical equivalent (SE) assessment was performed. Axial length (AL) and anterior chamber depth (ACD) were obtained by optical biometry system (IOL Master, Carl Zeiss AG, Feldbach, Switzerland).Corneal curvature and corneal transversal diameter were measured by corneal topography (Eye Top CSO, Firenze, Italia). Each eye underwent UBM (Zeiss-Humphrey Inc., San Leandro, CA, USA) using a 50 MHz transducer and received 1 temporal radial section and 4 transverse sections behind the limbus on temporal, inferior, nasal and superior sectors of the eye, respectively. We examined these parameters: number (N) and height (H) of the CP within each section (N).
Results: :
60% of the subjects were emmetropic, 16,4% were myopic, 23,6% were Hyperopic. The analysis showed a negative correlation between corneal transversal diameter and SE (r=-0.212; p=0.09), between ACD and corneal transversal diameter (r=-0.2; p=0.11)and between AL and N of CP (r=-0.248; p=0.03). A positive correlation was found between AL and corneal transversal diameter (r=0.271; p=0.03) and between AL and H of CP (r= 0.355; p=0.002). The analysis failed to show a positive correlation between corneal transversal diameter and N of CP (r=0.228; p=0.075) and H of CP (r=0.056; p=0.66).
Conclusions: :
in myopic eyes CP are longer and less numerous and corneal transversal diameter is greater. The absence of correlation between corneal transversal diameter and N of CP confirms the hypothesis that there is a real difference in the number of CP in myopic and hyperopic eyes.
Keywords: ciliary processes • imaging methods (CT, FA, ICG, MRI, OCT, RTA, SLO, ultrasound) • anterior segment