Prevalence of retinal changes in patients with systemic sclerosis: the association between retinal vascular changes and nailfold capillaroscopic findings

Abstract

Background Systemic sclerosis (SSc) is a connective tissue disease affecting the skin and multiple organs. Most of the evidence on ocular involvement comes from small studies. We evaluated the retinal vascular changes in patients with SSc and its associations with types, disease duration, skin score, and nailfold capillaroscopy changes. Material and methods We evaluated the demographic, clinical and nailfold capillaroscopy data of 52 patients referring to the clinic of scleroderma with SSc according to the 2013 ACR/EULAR SSc criteria. In addition, full ophthalmic examination in 52 patients and fundus photography in 40 patients were done in the ophthalmology clinic. Results There were 52 (49 women and 3 men, 17 diffuse and 35 limited) patients with SSc with mean disease duration of 8 ±5 years and mean age of 40 ±9 years. Retinal changes in the ophthalmologic examination were seen in 30.7% as increased vascular tortuosity. None of the patients had cotton wool spot, hemorrhage or hard exudate. Forty patients underwent fundus photography and 22.5% of them had vascular tortuosity. Only the presence of hemorrhage in the nailfolds was correlated with retinal tortuosity, and the other characteristics of nailfold capillaroscopy did not have any association with retinal changes. Conclusions Retinal vascular changes were seen in about one third of our patients. There was no correlation between nailfold capillaroscopy, disease duration, type and skin score of SSc patients and retinal vascular changes. These findings suggest that the mechanisms or the quality of changes in the retinal vessels and nailfold vasculature may be different.

Retinal changes in patients with idiopathic inflammatory myopathies: A case-control study in the MyoCite cohort

“…This is the first structured case-control study to explore retinal changes in IIM. Previous studies affirm the presence of exhibit retinal vascular changes such as cotton wool spots, retinal hemorrhages, and vascular tortuosity in up to 10% of SLE patients and a third of systemic sclerosis patients respectively ( 14 , 15 ). The comparable findings of retinal abnormalities in IIM patients may be attributed to either accelerated atherosclerosis, vasculitis, or vasculopathy.…”

Posterior Segment Evaluation of Patients with Systemic Sclerosis Using Optical Coherence Tomography Angiography

“…[14] Another study concluded there was no correlation between them and that the mechanism of change in retinal microvasculature and the nail folds are different. [15] Erturk and coauthors compared the OCT-A ndings in systemic sclerosis patients with patients with Raynaud's phenomenon. They found that the whole, parafoveal, and perifoveal SCP and DCP vessel densities were higher in patients with Raynaud's.…”

Peripapillary choroidal vascularity index and thickness in patients with systemic sclerosis

“…Due to the small number of patients in each group, this issue requires further investigation. Shenavandeh et al assessed retinal vascular changes in SSc patients, but found no evidence of a relationship between retinal vascular changes seen on fundus photography and SSc patterns upon NFC ( 56 ). However, this cannot be related to our study due to the functional and structural heterogeneity of retinal and choroidal circulation ( 57 , 58 ).…”