Optical coherence tomography angiography (OCT-A) in retinitis pigmentosa and macular dystrophy patients: a retrospective study

Abstract

Purpose To evaluate macular vascular abnormalities in patients with macular dystrophies (MD) and retinitis pigmentosa (RP) through application of optical coherence tomography angiography (OCT-A). Methods In this retrospective study, patients with MD and RP were examined by OCT-A and compared to healthy individuals. OCT-A images were analyzed regarding the diameter and surface area of the foveal avascular zone (FAZ) as well as flow (FL) in different retinal layers (superficial vascular complex (SVC), intermediate capillary complex (ICP), deep capillary complex (DCP), choriocapillaris (CC), and choroid (CD)). Results Twenty-one patients with MD, 21 patients with RP without macular edema (RPnE), 8 patients with RP with edema (RPwE), and 41 healthy individuals were enrolled. The group of MD and RPnE patients showed none or only minor changes in FAZ. In RPwE patients, the FAZ was significantly smaller in vertical and horizontal measurements and surface area in SVC, whereas it was markedly enlarged in ICP. FL was significantly reduced compared to healthy individuals by an average of 13.2% in CD, 14.2% in CC, and 8.4% in DCP in all patient groups. In ICP, the reduction was 9.2% for RPnE and 12.7% for RPwE patients. The SVC showed reduced FL in the MD (8.1%) and RPnE (10.3%) group. Conclusions OCT-A is a valuable tool to examine retinal vascular abnormalities in patients with MD and RP. OCT-A revealed a reduced flow in various retinal layers in MD, RPnE, and RPwE. Alterations of the FAZ were less distinct in these groups which add to the variation reported previously.

Clinical Applications of Optical Coherence Tomography Angiography in Inherited Retinal Diseases: An Up-to-Date Review of the Literature

“…The mean follow-up ranged between 2 months and 36 months [12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31]. Overall, significant reductions in both the superficial capillary plexus (SCP) and deep capillary plexus (DCP) were observed in all the affected patients of the evaluated cohorts over time [12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31]. In addition, all the studies that explored the involvement of choriocapillaris (CC) demonstrated its significant impairment in RP patients [12,[15][16][17][21][22][23]25,…”

“…In addition, all the studies that explored the involvement of choriocapillaris (CC) demonstrated its significant impairment in RP patients [12,[15][16][17][21][22][23]25,30,31]. Several authors focused on the variation of the foveal avascular zone (FAZ) area in RP patients, two-thirds of which described an increased avascular area [12,15,19,20,26,31], while the remaining third demonstrated its significant reduction [16,17,29]. Nakajima et al and Alnawaiseh et al explored an interesting association between the reduction in optic nerve head (ONH) vessel density (VD) in RP patients and the deterioration of the visual field mean deviation (MD) [15,27].…”