OCT Angiographic changes in patient with Long Covid complications

Abstract

Purpose : To study the hypothesis that patients with Long Covid-19 complications exhibit permanent vascular damage detectable by optical coherence tomography angiography.

Methods : Patients were recruited from the UCSD Long Covid clinic and informed consent was obtained. Participants were divided into two subgroups; Normal controls who been exposed to Covid-19 but showed no long-term complications, and patients who experienced long-term complications defined as long COVID. We imaged the patients with the Spectralis OCT (Heidelberg Engineering) using the OCT Angiography cube (512x512 pixel, 10 degrees FOV) and OCT volume scan (20°x20°, 49 lines, 15 scans/line) in both eyes. We used NIH Image (version 1.54g, NIH, imagej.org) to measure the area of the foveal avascular zone. We used AngioTool (version 0.6a, Zudaire et al. PLoS One 2011) to measure the vascular density in the different projection planes.

Results : We did not find a significant difference in the area of the foveal avascular zone. When we measured the vascular density (VD) in the different OCTA projections we found a significant difference in the DCP (deep capillary plexus) and DVC (deep vascular complex) layers (p<0.02), but not in the full retina projection.

Conclusions : In our study of patients suffering from complications associated with Long COVID, patients exhibited capillary damage within the deep retinal microvasculature. This can be a potential biomarker for detecting patients with long COVID complications. Vascular damage has been shown to be detectable in patients with diabetes, neurological diseases or vascular diseases. Further monitoring of the retina in COVID-19-recovered patients may help further understand the COVID-19 sequela.

This abstract was presented at the 2024 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Seattle, WA, May 5-9, 2024.