PURPOSE. The purpose of this study was to determine retinal hemoglobin oxygen saturation (SO 2 ) in patients with diabetic retinopathy (DR) using retinal oximetry (RO) and to correlate the degree of retinal ischemia using intravenous fluorescein angiography (IVFA).METHODS. This is a single-center cross-sectional cohort study. Twenty-seven controls and 60 adult patients with diabetes mellitus (16 without DR and 44 with DR) were enrolled. Patients were stratified according to DR severity. Using RO, SO 2 was measured in major retinal arterioles (SaO 2 ) and venules (SvO 2 ). Using IVFA, the percentage of retinal ischemia in 31 patients with DR was calculated and correlated with RO.
RESULTS.Pairwise one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) showed a significant increase in SaO 2 and SvO 2 in patients with proliferative DR (PDR) compared with controls (SaO 2 : PDR, 100 6 7% vs. controls, 91 6 4% [P ¼ 0.003]; SvO 2 : PDR, 66 6 11% vs. controls, 53 6 6% [P < 0.00001]). The percentage of retinal ischemia also increased with DR severity: ANOVA showed a significant difference in retinal ischemia between all categories of nonproliferative DR vs. PDR: 2.31 6 2% vs. 7.92 6 9% (P ¼ 0.017), respectively. Pearson two-tailed correlation showed significant correlation between SaO 2 and ischemia (R ¼ 0.467, P ¼ 0.011).CONCLUSIONS. Hemoglobin oxygen saturation of retinal arterioles and venules increases with DR severity; SaO 2 correlates with increasing ischemia measured by IVFA. Retinal oximetry may complement current imaging strategies to noninvasively augment the diagnosis and risk stratification of patients with diabetes.Keywords: retinal oximetry, diabetic retinopathy, fluorescein angiography I schemia plays a central role in the pathophysiology of diabetic retinopathy (DR). As ischemia increases, untreated DR generally progresses through four stages in an orderly fashion: mild nonproliferative DR (NPDR), moderate NPDR, severe NPDR, and proliferative DR (PDR). Intravenous fluorescein angiography (IVFA) is the gold standard to assess retinal ischemia and perfusion and is also helpful when determining treatment for DR. However, IVFA is relatively invasive as it requires the intravenous injection of contrast dye. Furthermore, IVFA provides only the anatomic state of retinal vessels and does not give any metabolic information, such as oxygenation.Recently, quantitative measurement of oxygen saturation (SO 2 ) has been possible using retinal oximetry (RO), a noninvasive imaging modality used to estimate hemoglobin oxygen saturation in retinal arterioles and venules. The technical aspects of RO have been previously described in the literature.1-3 Briefly, RO is based on similar principles as standard pulse oximetry, utilizing the light absorbance of oxyhemoglobin and deoxyhemoglobin at the carefully selected wavelengths of 570 and 600 nm. Studies have shown that the retinal oximeter produces repeatable and reliable measurements when detecting differences in SO 2 levels in controls, as well as in patients with retinal pathology. [3][4][5]...