Abstract
Purpose :
Patients with diabetes have an increased risk of developing cardiovascular complications. We compare the values of optical coherence tomography (OCT), and optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA) on eyes of patients with or without suffering myocardial infarction (MI).
Methods :
Imaging data from 424 eyes of patients with diabetes (32 with MI (69.9±7.9 years);392 without MI (66.7±10.5 years)) and 375 eyes from patients without diabetes (13 with MI (72.7±4.7 years);362 without MI (72.6±5.8 years)) were acquired in scope of an ophthalmological screening program that occurs in Coimbra, Portugal.
The OCT and OCTA data were acquired using CIRRU HD-OCT 5000 with AngioPlex®OCTA (angiography 3x3mm and Macular cube 512x128).The OCTA metrics were computed by the device and included the vessel density (VD) in the full, inner, and central 3x3 mm macular region. The thickness metrics included the metrics associated with macular, retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL), and ganglion cell layer (GCL).In addition to the descriptive statistics, the Mann-Whitney U test was used to study the statistical significance separation between groups with and without the occurrence of MI events for diabetic patients (DP) and non DP.
Results :
Eyes of DP suffering from MI presented vascular and retinal thickness values that allow a significative separation between their values and the metrics extracted from the eyes of DP that did not suffer from MI.The VD values associated with MI events present a lower mean (vessel density full (p<0.05):18.8±1.4 with MI;19.4±1.7 without MI).Related to the thickness metrics, only the values associated with GCL allow a significative separation of the two groups, with the group that suffers MI having a lower mean value (GCL average (p<0.05):74.4±9.6 with MI; 78.04±8.9 without MI).
None of the OCT and OCTA metrics used in this study allow for significatively separation of the eyes acquired from non-DP that suffer MI from the eyes acquired from non-DP that did not suffer MI.
Conclusions :
Metrics of vessel density and GCL thickness measured in the eyes of diabetic patients allow a significative separation of the eyes acquired from diabetic patients with MI from those without MI. Further investigation needs to be done to perform a better characterization by incorporating more data and considering factors like sex, age, presence of other pathologies, and patient habits.
This abstract was presented at the 2023 ARVO Imaging in the Eye Conference, held in New Orleans, LA, April 21-22, 2023.