Polypoidal choroidal vasculopathy

Polypoidal choroidal vasculopathy (PCV) has been recognised for almost two decades. In 1990, Yannuzzi and colleagues first described idiopathic polypoidal choroidal vasculopathy (IPCV) macular disorder—a choroidal vasculopathy that causes haemorrhagic and exudative macular degeneration—in 11 patients.1 The patients had peculiar polypoidal subretinal vascular lesions associated with serous and haemorrhagic detachments of the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE). In the late 1990s, Yannuzzi and colleagues expanded the clinical spectrum of IPCV and established the concept of PCV.2 3

In 1995, Spaide and colleagues identified the precise choroidal abnormalities associated with PCV and examined them using indocyanine green angiography (IA).4 IA showed two basic choroidal vascular changes: a branching network of vessels in the inner choroid and polypoidal vascular dilations at the border of the network of vessels. IA confirmed the definitive diagnosis of PCV. In 1999, using optical coherence tomography (OCT), Iijima and colleagues showed that on images of the inner choroid in eyes with PCV orange-red lesions protruded anteriorly.5 These lesions had a sharper peak than serous RPE detachments in the subretina, suggesting that polypoidal vascular lesions in eyes with PCV lie beneath Bruch’s membrane and are covered anteriorly by the …