Abstract
Purpose :
Unilateral PFV is thought to be sporadic in nature, whereas bilateral disease may be associated with genetic mutations. However patients with unilateral disease may have subtle retinal vascular findings in the unaffected eye seen on FA. This study aims to characterize these vascular abnormalities and call into question whether PFV is actually a predominantly a bilateral, asymmetric disease.
Methods :
This study is a retrospective case series of patients from 02/2011 to 11/2018 seen at Bascom Palmer Eye Institute with unilateral PFV that underwent FA. Patients with unilateral PFV had normal fellow eyes on funduscopic examination. Demographic information of each patient was obtained. FAs of fellow eyes were examined for characteristic retinal vascular abnormalities.
Results :
Forty-one patients met inclusion criteria for this study. Nineteen (46%) were women, 27 (66%) were white, and 21 (51%) were Hispanic. The average age at initial visit was 300 days. Seventeen (41%) unaffected fellow eyes were right eyes, and 24 (59%) were left eyes. Twenty-seven (66%) of fellow eyes had abnormalities seen on FA. Twenty-six (63%) were found to have peripheral retina avascularity, 20 (49%) had aberrant circumferential vessels, and 15 (37%) had terminal supernumerary branching (Figure 1). Nine fellow eyes (22%) had regional capillary dropout, 6 (15%) had terminal bulbing, 4 (10%) had abnormal vessel straightening, 2 (5%) had vessel leakage, and two (5%) had abnormal choroidal flush.
Conclusions :
Retinal vascular abnormalities seen on FA in patients with unilateral PFV were present in two-thirds of patients with funduscopically normal fellow eyes. To our knowledge this is the largest study examining FA findings in unilateral PFV. We demonstrate that patients with unilateral PFV may actually have bilateral involvement.
This is a 2020 ARVO Annual Meeting abstract.