Abstract
Purpose :
the study aims to describe different Swept-source Optical Coherence Tomographic (SS-OCT) changes in the Palestinian Retinitis Pigmentosa(RP) patients and to find if there is a correlation between these OCT findings and their Visual Acuity.
Methods :
A case series study was conducted on all patients diagnosed with Syndromic & Non Syndromic RP in St John of Jerusalem eye Hospital from Nov.2016 till Sep.2018 .Informed consent was obtained and examinations were carried out respecting the Code of Ethics of the World Medical Association (Declaration of Helsinki). Approval of the local Ethics Committee was obtained. SS-OCT images were assessed for patients already diagnosed with RP. Assessment was done by three viewers.
Results :
165 eyes of 83 patients ,54 males & 29 females patients with a mean age of 27 years (ranging from 6 to 78) ,15(18%) patients had Syndromic RP and most of the syndromic RP cases had Usher Syndrome .The Mean best corrected visual acuity was 0.6 LogMar. In Eight eyes the ellipsoid zone(EZ) was completely absent and in the remaining eyes the mean length of the EZ at the foveal level was 686microns .26 eyes (16%) had absent external limiting membrane(ELM)and eyes with remaining ELM had a mean length of ELM of 815 microns. The mean central macular thickness was 230 microns .33(20%) of the studied eyes had Cystoid macular edema(CME)while only 5 eyes had macular hole .32.3% of the eyes had Epiretinal membrane(ERM) and only one eye had Vitreomacular adhesion & one patient had choroidal neovascularization .33% of the eyes had HyperReflective Foci. A Negative correlation was found to be between visual acuity and length of EZ (p-value of 0.00028) as well as between visual acuity and length of ELM (p-value of 0.00017).
Conclusions :
SS-OCT changes in Palestinian patients diagnosed with RP showed different morphologies from studies of other populations which could be related to the genetic causes of RP in Palestine , patients with Usher Syndrome were noticed to have CME more than non-syndromic RP cases which also could be related to the genetic cause .Disease progression can be monitored by measuring the length of EZ & ELM which correlates negatively with the visual acuity .Choroidal thickness should be evaluated using SS-OCT in patients with RP .
This abstract was presented at the 2019 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Vancouver, Canada, April 28 - May 2, 2019.