Posterior vitreous detachment (PVD) is a separation between the posterior vitreous cortex and internal limiting membrane. Although PVD was historically considered an acute event, recent studies using spectral-domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) revealed a gradual progression of PVD in healthy subjects. Although SD-OCT improved PVD studies, the narrow imaging angle and long examination time were problematic to allow wide angle capture. The Xephilio OCT-S1 (Canon), a swept-source OCT (SS-OCT) device, can obtain up to 23-mm of widefield B-scan images in a single acquisition. We used this widefield SS-OCT to quantitatively evaluate the PVD stage in 214 healthy subjects aged 4–89 years and determine whether PVD stages differ between the bilateral eyes of each patient. Age was significantly positively correlated with the overall PVD stage (ρ = 0.7520, P < 0.001). Interestingly, partial PVD occurred in children as young as 5 years, indicating that initial PVD onset may occur much earlier than previously reported. Furthermore, PVD stages of the bilateral eyes were highly consistent in 183 subjects (85.5%). Widefield 23-mm SS-OCT thus revealed that PVD started earlier than anticipated, and age was correlated with the symmetry of PVD stage. Widefield 23-mm SS-OCT may also be clinically useful for the evaluation of diseased eyes.

AIM: To evaluate the effectiveness of micropulse laser trabeculoplasty (MLT) for eyes with open angle glaucoma (OAG) under maximal tolerable glaucoma eyedrops and to assess the effect of expertise performing MLT on its clinical effectiveness. METHODS: Medical records of 42 consecutive eyes of 34 patients diagnosed with OAG who underwent MLT were retrospectively reviewed. The effectiveness was determined using the Kaplan-Meier survival analysis. Failure was defined as an intraocular pressure (IOP) reduction of <20% from baseline, an IOP >21 mm Hg during two consecutive follow-up visits, or surgical intervention for OAG. To determine the impact of MLT surgical expertise on clinical effectiveness, the eyes were divided into two groups according to whether the procedure was conducted by an experienced specialist (defined as a glaucoma specialist who had conducted at least ten MLT procedures) or a less experienced glaucoma specialist. The difference in expertise was determined using a log-rank test. RESULTS: MLT was conducted by three glaucoma specialists. The overall survival rates were 0.76, 0.48, and 0.44 at 1, 3, and 6mo, respectively. The survival rates for MLT performed by a less experienced glaucoma specialist were 0.62, 0.31, and 0.25 (n=21 eyes) at 1, 3, and 6mo, respectively, whereas the survival rates for MLT performed by an experienced glaucoma specialist were 0.90, 0.64, and 0.64 (n=21 eyes) at 1, 3, and 6mo, respectively. The log-rank test showed a significant difference in the survival curves of the two groups (P=0.0061). CONCLUSION: The 6-month effectiveness of MLT for controlling IOP is relatively limited in eyes with OAG using maximal tolerable glaucoma eyedrops. However, its effectiveness may be improved if performed by a glaucoma specialist with sufficient MLT experience.

Purpose To investigate the impact of the local alert levels regarding coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) on the clinical patterns of rhegmatogenous retinal detachment (RRD) in Japan. Study design Retrospective, single-center, consecutive case series. Methods We compared two groups of RRD patients, a COVID-19 pandemic group and a control group. Based on the local alert levels in Nagano, five periods during the COVID-19 pandemic were further analyzed: epidemic 1 (state of emergency), inter-epidemic 1, epidemic 2 (second epidemic duration), inter-epidemic 2, and epidemic 3 (third epidemic duration). Patients’ characteristics, including symptoms’ duration before visiting our hospital, macula status, and retinal detachment (RD) recurrence rate in each period, were compared with those in a control group. Results There were 78 patients in the pandemic group and 208 in the control group. The pandemic group had a longer duration of symptoms than the control group (12.0 ± 13.5 days vs. 8.9 ± 14.7 days, P = 0.0045). During the epidemic 1 period, patients had a higher rate of macula-off RRD (71.4% vs. 48.6%) and RD recurrence (28.6% vs. 4.8%) than the control group. This period also demonstrated the highest rates compared to all other periods in the pandemic group. Conclusion During the COVID-19 pandemic, RRD patients significantly delayed visiting a surgical facility. They showed a higher rate of macula-off and recurrence compared to the control group during the state of emergency than during other periods of the COVID-19 pandemic, although the difference was not statistically significant due to the small sample size. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10384-023-00980-1.

Posterior vitreous detachment (PVD) is a separation between the posterior vitreous cortex and internal limiting membrane. Although PVD was historically considered an acute event, recent studies using spectral-domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) revealed a gradual progression of PVD in healthy subjects. Although SD-OCT improved PVD studies, the narrow imaging angle and long examination time were problematic to allow wide angle capture. The Xephilio OCT-S1 (Canon), a swept source OCT (SS-OCT) device, can obtain up to 23-mm of widefield B-scan images in a single acquisition. We used this widefield SS-OCT to quantitatively evaluate the PVD stage in 214 healthy subjects aged 4–89 years and determine whether PVD stages differ between the bilateral eyes of each patient. Age was significantly positively correlated with overall PVD stage (ρ=0.7520, P<0.001). Interestingly, partial PVD occurred in children as young as 5 years old, indicating that initial PVD onset may occur much earlier than previously reported.Furthermore, PVD stages of the bilateral eyes were highly consistent in 183 subjects (85.5%). Widefield 23-mm SS-OCT thus revealed that PVD started earlier than anticipated, and age is correlated with the symmetry of PVD stage. Widefield 23-mm SS-OCT may also be clinically useful for the evaluation of diseased eyes.