Abstract
Purpose :
Select cases from clinical context suggest there may be an unexplored relationship between dry macular degeneration and vitreomacular conditions such as—epiretinal membrane, vitreomacular traction, vitreomacular adhesion, and macular hole. We performed a retrospective, observational clinical study to quantitatively assess our hypothesis that the presence of epiretinal membrane decreases macular drusen volume.
Methods :
We retrospectively searched records from January 1, 2007 to December 31, 2016 to identify patients who have concurrent diagnoses of macular drusen or dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and one of the following: epiretinal membrane, vitreomacular traction, vitreomacular adhesion, or macular hole. Exclusion criteria included age under 18 years and history of trauma, intravitreal injection, wet age-related macular degeneration, retinal laser photocoagulation, vitreoretinal surgery, and diabetes mellitus. Of the 163 patients identified, 8 met the inclusion criteria of having macular drusen in both eyes and epiretinal membrane in one eye, as well as available spectral domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) imaging. Our primary outcome of macular drusen volume was obtained using Heidelberg segmentation software to measure drusen volume between Bruch’s membrane and the retinal pigment epithelium. The Yale University institutional review board approved this study.
Results :
Four out of eight patients exhibited a larger drusen volume in their eye without epiretinal membrane compared to the contralateral eye, as measured by Heidelberg segmentation software. The eyes with an epiretinal membrane had a mean drusen volume of 0.059mm3 [+/- 0.048 mm3] while the contralateral eyes without epiretinal membrane had a mean drusen volume of 0.099 mm3 [+/- 0.136 mm3]. A two-tailed paired t-statistic test yielded a p-value of 0.288.
Conclusions :
Our cohort of patients with concurrent bilateral macular drusen and unilateral epiretinal membrane had a lower average volume of drusen in the eye with epiretinal membrane compared to the contralateral eye, as measured by SD-OCT. Although the difference was not statistically significant, findings warrant further investigation with a larger population size.
This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2018 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Honolulu, Hawaii, April 29 - May 3, 2018.