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Widefield optical coherence tomography angiography for early detection and objective evaluation of proliferative diabetic retinopathy
  1. Hagar Khalid1,2,
  2. Roy Schwartz1,
  3. Luke Nicholson1,
  4. Josef Huemer1,3,
  5. Mohamed Hosny El-Bradey2,
  6. Dawn A Sim1,
  7. Praveen J Patel1,
  8. Konstantinos Balaskas1,
  9. Robin D Hamilton1,
  10. Pearse A Keane1,
  11. Ranjan Rajendram1
  1. 1 NIHR Biomedical Research Centre for Ophthalmology, Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and UCL Institute of Ophthalmology, London, UK
  2. 2 Ophthalmology Department, Tanta University, Tanta, Gharbia, Egypt
  3. 3 Vienna Institute for Research in Ocular Surgery, A Karl Landsteiner Institute, Hanusch Hospital, Vienna, Austria
  1. Correspondence to Dr Hagar Khalid, University College London Institute of Ophthalmology, London EC1V 9EL, UK; hagar.khalid{at}gmail.com

Abstract

Purpose To evaluate the utility of widefield optical coherence tomography angiography (WF-OCTA) compared with clinical examination in grading diabetic retinopathy in patients diagnosed clinically with proliferative diabetic retinopathy (PDR) or severe non-proliferative diabetic retinopathy (NPDR).

Design This retrospective observational case series included patients diagnosed clinically with PDR or severe NPDR. Patients underwent standard clinical examination and WF-OCTA imaging (PLEX Elite 9000, Carl Zeiss Meditec AG) using 12×12 montage scans between August 2018 and January 2019. Two trained graders identified neovascularisation at the disc (NVD) and neovascularisation elsewhere (NVE) on WF-OCTA which were compared with the clinical examination, and to ultra-widefield fluorescein angiography (UWFA) when available.

Results Seventy-nine eyes of 46 patients were evaluated. Of those, 57 eyes were diagnosed clinically with PDR, and 22 with severe NPDR. NVD was detected on OCTA-B scan as preretinal hyperreflective material (PRHM) in 39 eyes (100%) with evident flow signals in 79.5% compared with 51.3% detected clinically. We further classified NVD on OCTA into four subtypes and found that subtypes 1 and 2 could not be seen on clinical examination alone. WF-OCTA detected NVE in 81% of the cases compared with 55.7% detected clinically. Using WF-OCTA resulted in a higher percentage of PDR grading (88.6%) than on clinical examination (72.2%). When available, UWFA confirmed the WF-OCTA diagnosis in the majority of cases.

Conclusion This study demonstrates that WF-OCTA has a higher detection rate of PDR than clinical examination. This suggests that this modality could be used non-invasively for the purpose of early detection and characterisation of neovascularisation.

  • imaging
  • retina
  • macula
  • neovascularisation

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Footnotes

  • Twitter @h_a_Khalid, @royschwartz, @@pearsekeane

  • HK and RS contributed equally.

  • Contributors All authors included on the paper fulfil the criteria of authorship.

  • Funding HK supported by a scholarship from Egyptian mission sector, Ministry of Higher Education, Egypt. RR has received speaker fees from Carl Zeiss Medite AG. PAK has received speaker fees from Heidelberg Engineering, Topcon, Carl Zeiss Meditec AG, Haag-Streit, Allergan, Novartis and Bayer. He has served on advisory boards for Novartis and Bayer and has been an external consultant for DeepMind and Optos. PAK is supported by a UK National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Clinician Scientist Award (NIHR-CS--2014-12-023). RS has received travel expenses from Allergan. LN has received speaker fees from Allergan.

  • Competing interests None declared.

  • Patient consent for publication Not required.

  • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

  • Data availability statement Data are available upon reasonable request.

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