Abstract
Purpose :
To correlate spectral domain optical coherence tomogoraphy (SDOCT) macular thickness parameters with prevalence and severity of sickle retinopathy in pediatric patients with sickle cell disease (SCD) at Yale.
Methods :
Retrospective medical record review of 141 consecutive pediatric SCD patients who underwent retinal evaluation at Yale over a 10-year period was performed, of which 25 patients (50 eyes) had SDOCT imaging of the macula. In these patients, we correlated macular thickness values with the presence and severity of sickle retinopathy, type of SCD, fetal hemoglobin levels (HgF), and lowest hemoglobin (Hgb) level to date.
Results :
Of the 50 eyes (34SS, 10SC, 2S0Arab, 2Sbetaplus thal, 2Sbetathal) analyzed, 15 had proliferative (PSR), 20 had non-proliferative (NPSR), and 15 had no sickle cell retinopathy (NSR). Mean age of NSR, NPSR, and PSR patients was 17.1 ± 2.1, 17.9 ± 5.8, and 19.3 ± 2.9 years, respectively. There was no statistically significant difference in average macular thickness (275.7 ± 3.2 μm vs. 285.1 ± 7.2 μm, p=0.19) and macular volume (9.9 ± 0.1 mm3 vs. 10.3 ± 0.3 mm3, p=0.19) between NPSR and PSR, respectively. Age and HgF did not correlate with any of the 9 Early Treatment Diabetic Retinopathy Study (EDTRS) macular thickness subfields. Lowest Hgb values showed a significant correlation with inner (r=0.38, p<0.007) and outer (r=0.37, p<0.009) temporal, inner superior (r= 0.30, p<0.03), and inner nasal (r= 0.32, p<0.02) ETDRS subfields on macular SDOCT.
Conclusions :
Our results suggest that temporal thinning observed on macular SDOCT patients in SCD may be directly related to the level of anemia in this population. This may indicate the need for obtaining macular OCTs to detect subclinical macular thinning in SCD patients with episodes of severe anemia.
This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2016 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Seattle, Wash., May 1-5, 2016.