We reviewed the medical records of 282 RP patients who were examined at the Nagoya University Hospital. The diagnosis of RP was based on the presence of night blindness; peripheral visual field loss; typical fundus appearance, including changes of the RPE; blood vessel attenuation, bone spicule pigmentation, and a reduced (<50 μV) or extinguished full-field scotopic flash electroretinograms. From the 282 patients, we identified 71 patients who had undergone OCTA by Cirrus 5000 with Angioplex. Any images with significant artifacts due to blockage of the OCT signal by floaters, eyelashes, or movements were excluded. In addition, any images with significant segmentation errors as a result of pathologic changes, such as an epiretinal membrane, macular edema, or thinning of the retina, were also excluded.
In the end, 53 eyes of 53 RP patients (26 men and 27 women) were studied. Forty-six controls (25 men and 21 women) without any ocular or systemic disease were evaluated. The average (± standard deviation) age was 48.3 ± 17.3 years (range, 16–76 years) for the RP patients, and 52.7 ± 15.4 years (range, 20–75 years) for the controls. For the analyses, we selected eyes that had better-quality OCTA images, and if both eyes had similar quality of OCTA images, the right eyes were chosen. The first and the second authors (DI and SU) independently excluded the patients, and when there was a disagreement, the third author (TK) made the final decision.
All of the patients had undergone a complete ophthalmologic examination that included the measurements of the BCVA, spectral-domain OCT (SD-OCT), and perimetry with the Humphrey Field Analyzer (HFA; Carl Zeiss Meditec, Inc.). The mean deviation (MD) value of HFA 10-2 of the Swedish Interactive Threshold Algorithm program was used for the statistical analyses.