Abstract
Purpose :
Optical Coherence Tomography Angiography (OCTA) allows measurement of vascular density of the superficial(SCP) and deep capillary plexus (DCP) of the retina.Studies are needed in order to evaluate if these parameters will be useful to evaluate the damage of Branch Retinal Vein Occlusion (BRVO) in retinal vasculature, as well as to evaluate if there is a lower vascular density in the contralateral eyes of the patients affected by this disease, apparently normal in clinical examination. To solve this, the present study evaluate these parameters,comparing the eye with BRVO with their contralateral eye and both with normal eyes.
Methods :
Observational,cross-sectional study. 18 patients diagnosed with BRVO without previous treatment(6 men,mean age 52.9 years), 2 of them with bilateral disease, were included. Patients with low quality exams,high ametropias and other pathologies of the retina or choroid not only in the affected but also in the contralateral eye,were excluded. For a comparison group, 31 patients with no eye disease(9 men,mean age 51.3 years) with best corrected visual acuity of 0.1LOGMAR or better,were selected. Each patient underwent five OCTA exams,and only those with at least two good quality exams were selected.The mean of the parameter values was used for the statistical analysis.Kruskalwallis,Wilcoxon, Mann Whitney tests were used.
Results :
Lower vascular densities of the SCP and DCP were observed when eyes with BRVO were compared with the contralateral eyes,with the whole density parameters (pSCP=0.02;pDCP= 0.049) and parafoveal density parameters(pSCP=0.02;pDCP=0.011).Comparing these affected eyes with the normal eyes,lower vascular densities of SCP and DCP were also observed with the whole density (Both p<0.001) and parafoveal density (pSCP<0.001;pDCP<0.001) parameters.Moreover, when the contralateral eyes were compared to the normal eyes, both the whole density of the SCP and DCP (Both p=0.001) and the superficial and deep parafoveal density (pSCP=0.001;pDCP<0.001) were lower.There was no important statistical difference of the foveal density in any group.
Conclusions :
Lower vascular densities of the SCP and DCP were observed in eyes with BRVO. In addition, finding lower vascular densities of the contralateral eyes shows that there are already changes in these eyes before any clinical changes occur.
This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2018 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Honolulu, Hawaii, April 29 - May 3, 2018.