Purpose The aim of this study was to investigate subclinical choroidal involvement in patients with systemic COVID-19 infection and evaluate its long-term course. Materials and Methods This prospective, longitudinal study included 32 eyes of 16 COVID-19 patients and 34 eyes of 17 age-matched healthy control subjects. All of the participants had a detailed ophthalmological including visual acuity assessment, slit lamp examination and indirect ophthalmoscopy. Enhanced depth optical coherence tomography imaging of the posterior pole and peripapillary region was performed at the early (days 15-40) and late (9 th month) postinfectious periods. Choroidal vascularity index (CVI) was calculated using Image-J software. Results None of the patients had any examination finding associated with the ocular involvement of COVID-19. Subfoveal choroidal thickness (SFCT) significantly decreased at the early postinfectious period compared to healthy controls (p=0.045). SFCT significantly increased at the late postinfectious period compared to early (p=0.002) and the difference between the patients and controls became statistically insignificant (p=0.362). There was a similar trend for the peripapillary choroidal thickness measurements. CVI remained unchanged (p=0.721) despite the significant decrease in SFCT and total choroidal area (TCA, p=0.042), indicating that this decrease occurred both in choroidal stroma and blood vessels. CVI remained unchanged in the late postinfectious period (p=0.575) compared to the early period, indicating that recovery occurred in the entire choroidal tissue. Conclusion This study demonstrated that choroidal thickness was reduced in all measured areas and this decrease affected all choroidal layers. This choroidopathy was reversible and recovered at the 9 th postinfectious month.

BackgroundThe purpose of this study was to compare anatomic and visual changes in patients with lamellar macular hole undergoing pars plana vitrectomy with those in patients undergoing follow-up only.MethodsIn this retrospective consecutive case series study, we evaluated two groups of eyes, comprising 19 eyes from 19 patients with lamellar macular hole who underwent pars plana vitrectomy with internal limiting membrane peeling and 21 eyes from 21 patients with lamellar macular hole who had follow-up only. Corrected distance visual acuity (CDVA, in logMAR) and optical coherence tomography findings, including measurements of maximum diameter of lamellar defect and foveal thickness, and whether the inner segment/outer segment band was intact or not were documented at initial and follow-up examinations.ResultsAt initial examination, mean CDVA was 0.54 logMAR in the study group and 0.51 logMAR in the control group, and 0.33 logMAR and 0.55 logMAR, respectively, on final examination. In the study group, postoperative optical coherence tomography images were found to be normalized in ten patients (52.6%), improved in six (31.5%), unchanged in two (10.5%), and to have progressed to full-thickness macular hole in one (5.2%) in the intervention group, while all patients in the control group were found to have deteriorated within the follow-up period between March 2004 and June 2010.ConclusionIn patients with lamellar macular hole, combination treatment with pars plana vitrectomy and internal limiting membrane peeling appears to be effective, but further studies are required to establish new treatment modalities for patients who do not have a satisfactory outcome from treatment.

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Purpose: To show how a Turkish public eye care centre in Turkey initiated Six Sigma principles to reduce the number of complications occurring during and after pars plana vitreoretctomy surgeries. Method: Data were collected for two years. To analyse the complications among 2272 patients, main tools of Six Sigma's Define-Measure-Analyse-Improve-Control (DMAIC) improvement cycle such as SIPOC table, Fishbone Diagram and, Failure, Mode and Effect Analysis were implemented. Sources and root causes of twenty-two types of complications were identified and reported. Results: For a successful pars plana vitrectomy procedure, experience of vitreoretinal surgeon, attention of vitreoretinal surgeon, patient's anatomy were determined to be the "critical few" factors whereas, sterilization and hygiene, amount of silicone oil and amount of gas were found to be the "trivial many" factors. The most frequently occurring complication was found to be subconjunctival haemorrhage. Conclusion: The sigma level of the overall process was measured to be 3.8559. The surgical team concluded that twelve of the complications should be significantly reduced by taking the necessary preventive measures. Institutional ethics committee approval has been taken due to retrospective nature of this study.