Abstract
Purpose :
The actual gold standard for functional testing in patients with age related macular degeneration (AMD) is the evaluation of best-corrected visual acuity (BCVA), widely used as outcome measure in clinical studies. However, BCVA is not able to detect early stages of functional loss and changing in patients with AMD. For this reason, other methods of assessing visual function may provide valuable insights into the mechanism of retinal dysfunction and may identify risk factors for the progression of the disease. The aim of this study was to compare the retinal sensitivity by scotopic and the mesopic testing in eyes with drusen and reticular pseudodrusen using only 6 and 10 stimulus points in order to use a feasible technique to assess visual function more indicative and less time consuming than BCVA
Methods :
All subjects underwent a complete ophthalmological examination, including BCVA, slit-lamp examination, fundoscopy and OCT. In eyes with only drusen and only reticular pseudodrusen, retinal sensitivity was assessed by mesopic testing (Macular Integrity Assessment, MAIA; CenterVue, Padova, Italy) and after 35 minutes of dark adaptation by scotopic testing (MP1, Nidek Technologies, Padova, Italy) using two patterns of 6 and 10 stimulus points
Results :
15 eyes with drusen and 14 eyes with reticular pseudodrusen were enrolled with mean BCVA of 0.00 LogMAR. In mesopic and scotopic examination, we found a significant higher retinal sensitivity in patients with drusen compared to reticular pseudodrusen for 6 (P=0.001 and P<0.0001) and 10 stimulus points (P=0.001 and P<0.0001). About mean retinal sensitivity no differences were found comparing 6 to 10 stimulus points in patients with drusen and reticular pseudodrusen with MAIA and MP1 (P>0.05). The mean duration of the examination in mesopic testing was less then 2 minutes, significantly less then mesopic testing (P<0.01)
Conclusions :
Eyes with reticular pseudodrusen presented a significantly reduced retinal sensitivity then eyes with drusen in scotopic and mesopic testing.
The different retinal sensitivity between patients with reticular pseudodrusen and drusen was found in both group of patients with good visual acuity (0.00 LogMAR). The retinal sensitivity by mesopic testing may replace the use of scotopic testing and BCVA examination, saving time and providing useful information in the assessment of macular function
This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2018 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Honolulu, Hawaii, April 29 - May 3, 2018.