Abstract
Purpose :
To investigate macular retinal and choroidal thickness in unilateral (anisometropic or strabismic) amblyopia and normal controls using swept-source optical coherence tomography (SS-OCT).
Methods :
Thirty-one patients with hyperopic anisometropic amblyopia (6.9±3.8 years), 15 patients with strabismic amblyopia without anisometropia (7.9±4.2 years), and 24 age-matched normal controls (7.8±3.3 years) were studied. Retinal and choroidal thicknesses around the fovea using ETDRS map were measured and analyzed by 3D scans using SS-OCT [DRI OCT-1 Atlantis® (Topcon Corporation, Tokyo, Japan)]. The retinal thicknesses were divided into macular retinal nerve fiber layer (mRNFL), ganglion cell layer + inner plexiform layer (GCL+IPL), ganglion cell complex (GCC), and inner limiting membrane to retinal pigment epithelium (ILM-RPE) thicknesses. A one-way analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) which controlled for axial length was used to compare retinal and choroidal thicknesses among amblyopic, fellow, and normal control eyes. The correlation between each parameter was determined using the Pearson's correlation coefficient.
Results :
In the anisometropic amblyopia group, the GCL+IPL (superior, nasal, or inferior of outer ring), ILM-RPE (center 6mm), and choroidal thicknesses (subfovea, center 1mm, nasal and inferior of inner ring, superior and nasal of outer ring, or center 6mm) of the amblyopic eyes were significantly greater than those of the fellow eyes and of the control eyes. There was no significant correlation between interocular differences of visual acuity and those of retinal or choroidal thickness in the patients with anisometropic amblyopia. Also, there was no significant correlation between ILM-RPE and choroidal thicknesses in these patients. In the strabismic amblyopia group, none of the retinal or choroidal thickness was significantly different between the investigated eyes.
Conclusions :
Although there were significant inteocular differences in macular retinal and choroidal thicknesses with hyperopic anisometropic amblyopia, there was no significant interocular difference in strabismic amblyopia. This difference may be due to the difference in refraction or that of the pathogenesis of the disease between the two types of amblyopia.
This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2017 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Baltimore, MD, May 7-11, 2017.