Decreased Surface Area in Occipital Cortex is associated with Pupil Reflex in Glaucoma Patients

Abstract

Purpose : To analyze the correlation between structural characteristics of occipital cortex measured by 3-Tesla magnetic resonance imaging (3T MRI), and the pupillary reflex in glaucoma patients.

Methods : This was a cross-sectional study involving glaucoma patients and healthy volunteers. All participants performed SITA-standard 24-2 automated perimetry (SAP), frequency doubling perimetry (FDT) (psychophysical tests), optic disc stereophotograph, spectral-domain optical coherence tomography (Cirrus HD-OCT), and MR. In addition, patients were tested in the dark with light stimuli using the Ganzfeld system, and pupil diameter was measured with the assistance of an eye tracker. Comparison between glaucoma and control patients was performed using ttest. Structure-function correlation was performed using bootstrap resampling method for clustered data.

Results : 48 volunteers were included (30 glaucoma patients and 18 healthy volunteers) and 70.21% was female. Mean age was 61.8±10.0 and 55.7±7.7 years in glaucoma and healthy group, respectively (p=0.630). An association was observed between the average area of occipital pole in right hemisphere in glaucoma group and the sustained pupillary response to the blue flash (p = 0.025). And, an association was observed between the average area of occipital pole in right hemisphere in glaucoma group and the sustained pupillary response to the right flash (p = 0.024).

Conclusions : This study showed a correlation between structural damage measured by MR and functional damage measured by pupillary reflex in glaucoma.

This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2018 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Honolulu, Hawaii, April 29 - May 3, 2018.