Article Text
Abstract
Aims To describe the vascular changes in patients affected by non-neovascular age-related macular degeneration (AMD), featuring reticular pseudodrusen (RPD), drusen, or both RPD and drusen by means of optical coherence tomography angiography (OCT-A).
Methods Cross-sectional observational case series. Patients with non-neovascular AMD presenting at the Medical Retina Service of the Department of Ophthalmology, University Vita-Salute San Raffaele in Milan were recruited. Patients underwent best-corrected visual acuity, biomicroscopy, infrared reflectance, short-wavelength fundus autofluorescence and OCT-A (AngioPlex, CIRRUS HD-OCT 5000, Carl Zeiss Meditech, Dublin, USA). Main outcome was quantification of vessel density, stromal tissue, and vascular/stromal (V/S) ratio at the choriocapillaris (CC), the Sattler and Haller's and the whole choroid layers among different groups of patients with non-neovascular AMD by means of binarised OCT-A scans.
Results 45 eyes of 34 patients were enrolled (15 eyes of 11 patients with RPD, group 1; 15 eyes of 11 patients with drusen, group 2; 15 eyes of 12 patients with mixed phenotype, group 3). The CC, the Sattler and Haller's and the whole choroid vessel density were reduced in all groups of patients (p=0.023, p=0.007 and p=0.011 in group 1, group 2 and group 3 for the CC; p=0.021, p=0.037 and p=0.043 in group 1, group 2 and group 3 for the Sattler and Haller's density; p=0.016, p=0.002 and p<0.001 in group 1, group 2 and group 3 for the choroidal density), with significantly lower V/S ratios compared with healthy controls.
Conclusions Patients with non-neovascular AMD show significant choroidal vascular depletion and fibrotic replacement, suggesting a possible role in the pathogenesis and progression of the disease.
- Retina
- Imaging
- Macula
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Footnotes
Contributors All the authors contributed to the conception or design of the work, the acquisition, analysis and interpretation of data, drafting the work, revising it critically for important intellectual content and gave final approval of the version to be published.
Competing interests FB consultant for Alcon (Fort Worth,Texas,USA), Alimera Sciences (Alpharetta, Georgia, USA), Allergan Inc (Irvine, California,USA), Farmila-Thea (Clermont-Ferrand, France), Bausch And Lomb (Rochester, New York, USA), Genentech (San Francisco, California, USA), Hoffmann-La-Roche (Basel, Switzerland), Novagali Pharma (Évry, France), Novartis (Basel, Switzerland), Bayer Shering-Pharma (Berlin, Germany), Sanofi-Aventis (Paris, France), Thrombogenics (Heverlee,Belgium), Zeiss (Dublin, USA), Pfizer (New York, USA), Santen (Osaka, Japan), Sifi (Aci Sant'Antonio, Italy). GQ consultant for: Alcon (Fort Worth, Texas, USA), Alimera Sciences (Alpharetta, Georgia, USA), Allergan (Irvine, California,USA), Bayer Shering-Pharma (Berlin, Germany), Bausch and Lomb (Rochester, New York, USA), Molecular partners (Zurich, Switzerland), Novartis (Basel, Switzerland), Ophthotech (New York, New York, USA)
Patient consent Obtained.
Ethics approval Ethics committee of San Raffaele Hospital.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
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