Visual Function Assessments Following Surgical Repair of Macula-off Retinal Detachment

Abstract

Purpose : To evaluate the utility, reproducibility, and variability of several visual function assessments as potential outcome measures for patients who have undergone macula-off rhegmatogenous retinal detachment (RRD) repair with pars plana vitrectomy (PPV).

Methods : Patients with a macula-off RRD of 1-10 day duration, and successfully repaired with PPV were recruited for the study. Visual function assessments were performed at time of recruitment, and again one month later, and included: ETDRS Best Corrected Visual Acuity (BCVA), low luminance BCVA, low contrast BCVA (2.5% and 5%), Mars contrast sensitivity, reading speed (acuity, speed, and critical print size), color vision testing (protan, deutan, and tritan), and microperimetry. Some assessments were performed twice at each visit. Basic descriptive statistics were used for numerical measures. Pearson correlation coefficients between the two visits were used to determine reproducibility for each ocular assessment performed on the study eyes. The paired t-statistic was used to detect differences in effect size between the study and fellow eyes for each ocular assessment at each visit.

Results : Fourteen patients (9 male, 5 female) with mean age 69 years at time of surgery were recruited and participated in both study visits. Measurements for numerical ocular assessment are presented in Table 1 for each visit and eye. Correlation coefficients across the two visits were highest for ETDRS BCVA (0.96), Tritan color vision testing (0.96), low contrast BCVA (0.95), and low luminance BCVA (0.94). Differences between study eye and fellow eye were largest for ETDRS BCVA (average t-statistic of 4.1), low luminance deficit (average t-statistic of 4.2), and reading speed critical print size (average t-statistic of 3.7). Although tritan color vision testing, low luminance BCVA, and low contrast BCVA had high correlation coefficients, they had relatively low t-statistics, whereas low luminance deficit and reading critical print size had high t-statistics but relatively low correlation coefficients.

Conclusions : Findings from this study indicate that ETDRS BCVA is the most reliable, reproducible, and discriminating measure overall when assessing visual function outcomes following macula-off repair surgery.

This is a 2020 ARVO Annual Meeting abstract.