Abstract
Purpose :
To evaluate correlation between macular edema associated with branch retinal vein occlusion (BRVO) and macular perfusion in superficial capillary plexus (SCP) and deep capillary plexus (DCP) using optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA).
Methods :
Retrospective, case-control study. A series of 20 patients with BRVO followed up for 12 months or more were enrolled. Persistent macular edema was defined as follows; central retinal thickness was greater than 300 μm, and it persisted or recurred less than 3 months after the final treatment. We compared the two groups including 7 eyes with persistent macular edema and 13 eyes without macular edema. Macular perfusion status was evaluated using OCTA. We defined a gap vessel as a remaining vessel in SCP coexistent with capillary loss in DCP. The gap vessels were determined by subtracting vessel images of DCP from those of SCP using an image processing technique.
Results :
In eyes with persistent macular edema, area of gap vessels was significantly greater than in eyes without macular edema. (p=0.0013, 14.34 % ± 2.84 %, 8.02% ± 2.69%, respectively) The other evaluation items including the area of foveal avascular zone, superficial vessel density and deep vessel density were not significantly different between these groups (p=0.6630, p=0.2344, p=0.3415, respectively).
Conclusions :
Difference of capillary loss between SCP and DCP can afford the development of persistent macular edema in BRVO.
This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2017 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Baltimore, MD, May 7-11, 2017.