Abstract
Purpose: :
To determine whether a correlation is present among the changes of visual acuity, retinal sensitivity, fundus autofluorescence (FAF) and the photoreceptor inner and outer segment (IS/OS) junction observed by optical coherence tomography (OCT) in patients with retinitis pigmentosa (RP).
Methods: :
Twenty-four eyes of 12 patients (5 women and 7 men) with typical RP were examined by OCT3 and Microperimetry-1 (MP-1) during the follow-up period of more than one year. The FAF images were also taken with fundus camera. The age of the patients ranged from 24 to 63 years (mean 47.1 years), and the follow-up period ranged from 12 to 24 months (mean 15.6 months). During the follow-up period, the changes of the radius of an abnormal parafoveal ring of high-density FAF (AF ring), length of the IS/OS, visual acuity in logMAR units and mean retinal sensitivity at the 24 locations covering the central 10° were studied.
Results: :
The AF ring radius, IS/OS length, visual acuity and retinal sensitivity were decreased or unchanged during the follow-up period in all the 24 eyes. The changes of retinal sensitivity were significantly correlated with the changes of AF ring radius(P=0.0389), but not with those of IS/OS length (P=0.7825). The changes of visual acuity were not significantly correlated with those of both AF ring radius and IS/OS length (P=0.1045, P=0.9765, respectively).
Conclusions: :
The AF ring radius and IS/OS length were decreased or unchanged during the follow-up period of more than one year in RP patients. With respect to the changes from the baseline, there was a significant correlation only between the retinal sensitivity and IS/OS length.
Keywords: retinal degenerations: hereditary • imaging methods (CT, FA, ICG, MRI, OCT, RTA, SLO, ultrasound) • imaging/image analysis: clinical