Retinal findings of COVID-19 patients using ocular coherence tomography angiography two to three months after infection

Abstract

PURPOSE The aim of this study was to evaluate the ocular disorders in COVID-19 patients, two to three months after infection. METHODS In this cross-sectional, historically controlled study, fifty-one COVID-19 patients were compared with thirty-seven age, and gender-matched healthy individuals. After complete ophthalmological examination, all participants underwent peripapillary and macular optical coherence tomography, and optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA) measurements (OptoVue Inc, Freemont, CA, USA). RESULTS The time between the initial onset of symptoms, and ophthalmologic examination was 63.31±15.21 (40-95 days). Ophthalmic examination of all the recovered COVID-19 patients was within normal range. None of the peripapillary and macular OCTA parameters were significantly different between the two groups with pairwise comparisons, but after adjusting for age, gender, axial length, and signal strength index (SSI), recovered COVID-19 eyes showed a significant increase in peripapillary retinal nerve fiber (RNFL) thickness, superficial, and deep macular vessel densities in parafoveal and perifoveal regions compared with healthy control eyes (p<= 0.05). Inner retinal thickness overall is higher in recovered COVID-19 eyes compared to healthy eyes after adjustment. CONCLUSION Patients with moderate-intensity SARS-CoV-2 pneumonia had altered peripapillary and macular vessel density compared to healthy subjects. Further investigation is warranted to analyze the correlation of these changes with disease severity as well as evolution of these changes over time.

Retinal microvascular changes in patients recovered from COVID-19 compared to healthy controls: A meta-analysis

“…Leave one out sensitivity analysis showed that when the study of Naderi Beni et al [22] was excluded from the analysis of the whole image VD at SCP, there was a statistically significant reduced VD in the COVID-19 recovered group compared to healthy controls (SMD=-0.37, 95% CI=-0.68 to -0.05, p=0.02, I 2 =76%). In the DCP foveal VD, when the studies of Cennamo et al, Abrishami et al, Bilbao-Malave et al and Erogul et al were excluded from the analyses, the results were no longer statistically significant.…”

“…The electronic database search identified 754 articles. After screening of all titles and abstracts of potentially relevant articles, a total of 12 studies met the inclusion criteria [16] , [17] , [18] , [19] , [20] , [21] , [22] , [23] , [24] , [25] , [26] , [27] , [28] ( Figure 1 ). The study characteristics and Newcastle Ottawa scores of the included studies are presented in Table 1 .…”

The effect of various types of COVID-19 vaccines on the retinal microvasculature

“…The ocular manifestations of COVID-19 infection include episcleritis, uveitis, conjunctivitis, retinal vascular changes such as cotton wool spots, retinal hemorrhages, dilated veins, and tortuous vessels, ocular motility defect, optic neuritis, cranial nerve palsies, acute dacryoadenitis, ocular myasthenia gravis, and epiphora [11] , [12] .…”

Neuro-Ophthalmic Visual Impairment in the Setting of COVID-19

“…89 A more recent study also demonstrated the same findings. 90 The results suggest that some of the patients were recovering from occult intracranial hypertension or disc inflammation. Interestingly, patients who had experienced anosmia and ageusia showed higher thicknesses than patients without these symptoms, suggesting an increased risk of CNS infiltration in patients with involvement of the olfactory epithelium.…”