Objective
To evaluate vascular changes in the early period after COVID-19 infection and at a 6-month follow-up.
Methods
This study included 50 eyes of 25 patients who had been hospitalized for PCR-positive COVID-19 infection and 50 eyes of 25 healthy individuals. All subjects underwent optical coherence tomography angiography (OCT-A) using a 6 × 6 macular protocol in the early period after hospital discharge and 6 months later. Foveal vessel density (VD) and parafoveal VD values were measured from 4 quadrants (superior, inferior, nasal, temporal) of the superficial capillary plexus (SCP) and the deep capillary plexus (DCP). Choriocapillaris (CC) flow area and foveal avascular zone (FAZ) area were also measured. The OCT-A measurements of the patient group were compared both between time points and with the control group at each time point.
Results
COVID-19 patients showed lower VD values than control subjects in all parafoveal quadrants of both the SCP (superior, p=0.01; inferior, p=0.048; nasal, p=0.003; temporal, p=0.048) and the DCP (superior, p=0.001; inferior, p=0.011; nasal, p=0.012; temporal, p=0.018) at the initial checkup and in all parafoveal quadrants of the SCP (superior, p=0.0001; inferior, p=0.007; nasal, p=0.001; temporal, p=0.017) and in 2 of the parafoveal quadrants of the DCP (superior, p=0.003; inferior, p=0.016) at the 6-month follow-up. CC flow area values were significantly lower at the 6-month follow-up compared with the initial examination (p=0.044).
Conclusion
It is important to perform appropriate follow-up for COVID-19 patients as retinal vascular flow changes may persist in the long term.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.