Abstract
Purpose :
To investigate the effect of amblyopia treatment on macular choroidal thickness (CT) in anisometropic amblyopia using swept-source optical coherence tomography (SS-OCT).
Methods :
Thirteen patients (6.2 ± 2.4 years at the enrollment visit) with anisometropic amblyopia were examined. These patients underwent amblyopia treatment initially with refractive correction alone until no further visual acuity (VA) improvement, and if amblyopia persists, with refractive correction plus patching. VA, axial length (AL), and CT were measured at the enrollment visit before treatment and at the final visit after treatment for at least 6 month. The CT measured using SS-OCT was corrected for magnification error using individual AL, spherical refraction, cylinder refraction, and corneal radius. The CT was automatically analyzed using the built-in software and was divided into three macular regions: subfoveal choroidal thickness (SFCT), radii of 0.5 mm (center 1 mm), and radii of 3.0 mm (center 6 mm). For statistical analysis, paired t-test, two-sample t-test, and a one-way analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) which was controlled for the AL, were used to evaluate differences in the parameters studied when appropriate.
Results :
The observation period was 22.2 ± 11.0 months (range: 7 to 36 months). The logMAR improvement in the amblyopic eyes was 0.41 ± 0.19 with amblyopia treatment (p < 0.001). The ALs in amblyopic and fellow eyes were significantly extended at the final visit than at the enrollment visit (p < 0.001 for both comparisons). The SFCT, center 1 mm CT, and center 6 mm CT in the amblyopic eyes were significantly thicker than those of the fellow eyes both before and after treatment (p < 0.05 for all comparisons). There was no significant change of the SFCT, center 1 mm CT, and center 6 mm CT between before and after treatment in the amblyopic eyes (p = 0.25, 0.21, and 0.84, respectively) and in the fellow eyes (p = 0.75, 0.84, and 0.91, respectively). In addition, no significant correlation between the change in logMAR and the change in CT was found in the amblyopic eye.
Conclusions :
Although VA significantly improved by amblyopia treatment, no statistically significant change was found in CT between before and after the treatment. Our results using SS-OCT revealed that the degree of amblyopia seems to have little association with macular CT in anisometropic amblyopia.
This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2018 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Honolulu, Hawaii, April 29 - May 3, 2018.